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May 8

Which Distro Should I Use?

Now before the flamewars and links to polishlinux start, let me say that I know that each Linux distro has its advantages, and am familiar with the "how to choose a distro" websites.

What Linux (or BSD; really anything that's free) distro is right for me? I run Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex right now, and wanted to do a fresh install to Jaunty Jackalope (because screw KDE 4.1), but then I started shopping around to see how the other distros are doing again. Gentoo looks needlessly complicated (I'm not against a steep learning curve, so long as it's worth it, but I'm not convinced that Gentoo is) and I'm hesitant to switch to RPMs.

I am only an "intermediate" level user, but am not afraid of getting my hands dirty with more complicated systems, as I'm willing to learn whatever I need to; so long as it's worth the trouble. The asthetics of the OS aren't important to me at all, nor is it's OOTB operability, as I install all my own software and customize it manually (so I care nothing about what software it comes with nor its themes, or anything like that). The most important things to me, then, are stability (which seems to be Debian's claim to fame right now) and "bleeding edge-ness"; what intrigues me about Gentoo is that I don't have to wait forever between releases to get the features I want. Also important, but less so, are flexibility and performance (it looks like OpenSuse or Fedora are the most responsive, right now).

Is Ubuntu a good compromise between the stability of Debian and the short release cycles of, say, Fedora? Or is there another OS that I should be looking into? Is Sabayon (the Gentoo derivative) worth trying out?

I don't expect some "objective" answer, I just want to get some opinions. Thanks, Deshi no Shi (talk) 00:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC) (P.S. KDE rules Gnome drools)[reply]

I spent a good portion of my undergraduate time working between different unixes and linuxes and qnixes and things you've never heard of. Boy, is it confusing! First of all, you've made the important first step in comprehending that the front-end user interface (GNOME or KDE or fvwm or whatever) is not the operating system distribution. (In fact I've run all of the above environments on all of the above *nixes and sometimes as a result I can't tell which machine I'm currently on!). And, your csh and bash and tcsh and zsh will probably run on all of the above as well. So... what's it all about? What's the difference between the distributions? (Linux distribution might help out here, but seriously... what exactly is a "distro" anyway? Why is Debian different than Ubuntu, if they both use the same package manager, same shell, same GUI, same libraries, ...)

Well, first of all, the Linuxes are all running the linux kernel, while the Solarises and BSDs and Mac OSXes are not. (And QNX? Well, just suffice to say that although it presents you with a POSIX-like shell and a lot of the standard system-calls, it's... not very much of a linux at all!) But all of them are POSIX compliant, and support networking and multithreading and encryption and so forth. But if you are going to remap your memory system for a custom coprocessor and need to recompile your kernel memory-module to handle variable page sizes based on current coprocessor instruction, you're going to need to choose your kernel carefully (I've heard, from people who would know, that CENTOS and Solaris make this task "easier"). And if you were planning to do something more benign, like maybe mixed shared memory programming with OpenMP and a little pthread code in the same program, you might actually find that there's a difference in the dynamic scheduler capability for different incarnations of the kernel. Or maybe you've got some files mounted on an AFS drive and you want to ensure that the network traffic stays encrypted, all the way through the machine, past the network, up to the shell, through the user-space, and decoded at the point-of-use in some kind of protected memory. Then you better have a kernel with libPAM module support! Are you doing these things? If not, you may never really notice your distribution.

Backing up a notch or two, at the "intermediate" level, you are going to want to install or compile some program some day which is going to have some dependencies. A lot of libraries are pre-packaged and precompiled for the common distributions (in the form of a DPKG or an RPM or sometimes even straight-up .so files). Pick a distribution that's going to be used by people who work with things that you work with... that way, you'll have a community which has already prepared the sort of tools you are going to need. It's not often worth anybody's time to trace back seven levels of library-dependency when you just want to get a standard tool to run.

Compiler support may be an issue between vendors. Some of the more esoteric optimization flags and the less standard extensions (like some c99 complex-math support) turns out to be not very platform-portable - this usually means that it's getting linked in with some system library (like libm.so).

So, what's the moral here? Distributions make a big difference if you're doing non-standard things; but if you follow "best practice" and write code that doesn't link with weird libraries, and doesn't jump from high-level logic to operating-system calls in the same module, you'll be better off and spend less time tracking down portability problems. I would stick with Ubuntu if I could, but some of my tools are only available on other linux platforms (and aren't worth the hassle of porting).

Hopefully this will give you some perspective - use "whatever distribution is easier." If you actually get to a point in your professional or academic development when you can decisively state that "the Solaris cilk scheduler gave me a 20% speed improvement" or "the network stack on QNX was insufficient to handle packet buffers for gigabyte-sized files using https" or some other distribution-specific issue, you're probably going to care what distribution you are using. Until then, pick a good shell, pick a good user-interface, and use as much standard unmodified software as you possibly can. Nimur (talk) 01:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, opinions are free too! I use 64 bit SuSE 11.x (now OpenSuSE) on all but one of my half dozen home computers (the one that doesn't is my firewall machine which is running SuSE 6.3 with the barest minimum set of files necessary to allow the computer to boot and firewall (security in obscurity!). I use SuSE because back in the early days of Linux, the SuSE guys gave away gorgeous boxed editions of the full SuSE distro to anyone who contributed software that they used. The boxes kept coming over many years - so whenever I needed to install on a new machine, it was just easier to grab the latest SuSE box and stick it onto the new computer. Since the Novell take-over, they stopped doing that - but OpenSuSE works pretty good too - and I'm kinda stuck in a rut.

The full SuSE distro is nice because SO many programs can be pre-installed from the honking great DVD image. The mechanisms for adding more stuff post-install aren't particularly nifty - but when pretty much everything you'll ever need is right there in your original install, it's rare indeed that I see a program I want and find that it's not already on my computer. Since I want to USE Linux in a productive way - and not spend my time tinkering with it - I think SuSE is a pretty good choice. However, if you are a tinkerer or a learner or you have to have the very latest version of everything - then SuSE is probably a poorer choice.

However, Ubuntu is pretty amazingly popular - and there are good reasons for that too. I don't have a recommendation - it truly is the case that everyone has a different idea of what works for them.

01:19, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I've never used or even seen Zenwalk Linux so my opinion is worth squat; but for the nothing my opinion is worth, Zenwalk sounds lean, adaptable, reliable, and palatable. -- Hoary (talk) 01:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Puppy linux was recommended to me. 78.147.3.176 (talk) 08:57, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, I'm surprised I got so many good responses! Thanks everyone, I appreciate your advice. I've thought about what you said, Nimur, and it makes a lot of sense. I think I understand the differences and options a little better now. I think I'm going to stick with Ubuntu for the time being, with maybe Fedora and Sabayon partitions to play around. Thanks again! Deshi no Shi (talk) 20:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Super Ubuntu is ubuntu on steroids, you might like it...

Apostrophes and quotation marks to question marks

Why is it that on some web pages, all the apostrophes and quotation marks get changed to question marks (e.g. here)? I've seen this phenomenon pop up with relative frequency in my time on the Net. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 06:16, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's what you get when you paste text from Microsoft Word into your web-design application. Word converts apostrophes and double-quotation marks to "smart quotes" -- so-named because they are slanted: ' becomes ’. But note that, in order to produce the second glyph, I typed ’. Likewise, " becomes ”. If you paste such angled characters directly into certain pages with custom fonts, they aren't displayed. The presence of boxes or question marks is a sign of an inexperienced or lazy web designer. View the source of the page (View → Source in Internet Explorer or Firefox) and you'll see what I mean.--24.9.71.198 (talk) 07:10, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can get lazy and not get caught. Just turn off Smart Tags in the Word application.KoolerStill (talk) 09:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Web programming supports special characters which are available on plain text editors (such as textpad). For any other characters, you will have to specify the html equivalent failing which it would either be shown as a box or a question mark. For reference you can google 'html equivalent of special characters' which will give you the list which you should use for web programming. I would suggest not to use any special character and develop a habbit of using HTML equivalent.203.99.215.11 (talk) 10:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It also happens when a web-site assumes a character encoding but doesn't bother to specify it (like a bank I use), and your browser is set up with a different encoding as default. --ColinFine (talk) 17:49, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Infrastructure design for Information Technology services

After knowing the client's requirements regarding a particular service or solution, how do we decide on the approach to be taken for the complete project (things like the environment, the resources, the technology, the servers, database, permissions and the associated risk analysis)? 203.99.215.11 (talk) 10:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ITIL? (As always, we have an article on everything). Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a set of publications which outline setup, configuration, technology choices, and so forth, for "best practice" in a large organization. It sounds like it's exactly the answer to the question you are asking. Unfortunately, ITIL is also hundreds of volumes (covering every detail for the entire enterprise). If you have a specific question, like "what's the best way to load-balance the network storage for a federated database", you can drill down to that volume in the ITIL library. (Also, I think the actual information is "proprietary" and expensive - sort of like hiring a ready-made consultant - even though most of the practices revolve around using free, free software). Nimur (talk) 12:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Usually these decisions come from a combination of the client's needs and your team's experience and which technologies and setups they are familiar with. The question implies that you're in over your head on this one (if the consultant is in the position of having to hire consultants to make basic decisions). Tempshill (talk) 15:40, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, that's really what this sounds like - but for the benefit of the doubt, maybe the OP is a student? Maybe a business-student trying to get involved in IT? As Tempshill mentioned, the correct answer is "use your technology experience and domain-specific knowledge; balance cost versus return for various options; and check with some standard references for the implementation details." Nimur (talk) 16:55, 8 May 2009 (UTC) [reply]

Well.. Nimur is correct that I am a business student trying to gain some knowledge on the IT side. I have been assigned a project to work on the same lines as mentioned in my question. Will have to surely come up with a questionaire that would help me in making the final decision. I guess I will require a questionaire for the client and also for the company developing the soultion. Please guide on these lines and provide me with references / case studies (if any).203.99.215.11 (talk)

Do it yourself. Ask your librarian what reference databases or journals that you can access. You are not allowed to ask homework questions on the Reference Desk. If you find your studies boring, then you should change your major. Frankly, this project of yours is a waste of time in any case. It is all theoretical bullshit that will do you no good in the workplace. I know this because I majored in Business Management as an undergraduate and then Computer Information Systems (inside a business college) for my master's degree. Avoid theoretical subjects and learn something applicable in the real world -- accounting, programming, law, etc. Strategy cannot be taught. It is unique to every company. This is not trolling, but blunt honesty. Sorry.--Kje53yt (talk) 09:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, to to the other respondents - there's no need to be so brash; he's asking for help, not answers. Secondly, to the original questioner: while you're learning strategy for dealing with IT, you might as well learn something about the culture of IT as well. People who work in front of computers for 8 hours, and then go home for another 8 hours of recreational computer use, rarely take kindly to "outside advice" about how to run their technology infrastructure better. (How can you possibly know their system as well as they do?) This is especially painful if the outside advice comes from a non-expert computer user. (This is not meant to be a jab at you, it's just the way it is). This culture is widespread and prevalent, and it's the source of a lot of jokes about sysadmins and programmers. So, step 1 in your strategy must be to become more of an expert than your client regarding the particular technology in question. Did you read through the ITIL library? Did you come across some technology names and terminology in your project? Did you read and understand the appropriate Wikipedia articles, and dig deeper into the external links? One thing is for sure - the internet has no shortage of detailed information on the subject of technology operations. Nimur (talk) 14:58, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gmail error

I got a error 500 today from my Gmail account. The account was temporarily not available. What happens with the incoming emails in the mean time? Are they saved and delivered?--80.58.205.37 (talk) 10:28, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I gots the same thing, googles help page about the error says "while Gmail is inaccessible, your messages and personal information are safe." I don't know if they applies only to already saved messages though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:19, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The real answer is, "it depends on how catastrophic the outage was." In a normal configuration, your email client (Google's GMail website) is a front-end, and the mail exchange servers, file servers, etc., are different software on different computer systems (maybe in different geographic places, even). Most likely, the 500 Service Unavailable message referred only to the client front-end. In that case, new mails would not be lost. But unless anyone has an insider-view in to the actual system status at Google, it's impossible to know for certain whether the back-end stayed alive when the client-side crashed. Email has some redundancy (like "wait and retry the send later") built in to the protocol design (if the sender's side SMTP server supports it), so even if there was a short outage on the backend servers, all mail is not guaranteed to be lost. Nimur (talk) 12:11, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Laptop advice

I'm looking to get a new laptop, and I've shopped around a bit and can't find exactly what I'm looking for. Was hoping for some advice.

I have right now (and love) my dying Lenovo Thinkpad. Two main issues with it, other than the fact that it's really beaten up. 1) the speakers suck. I want good ones. And 2) the harddrive's really small. It's about 80 gigs, I think, and I'd like something closer to 2-3 or more hundred.

I am looking for a computer that's similarly solid and fast, though. It should have a nice keyboard. It should be Windows (XP's best), but I can switch from Vista. It shouldn't be prohibitively expensive (above $1500 or so), shouldn't be more than 6ish pounds (for a 15 inch screen), and it shouldn't heat up or be noisy when running (my Thinkpad's silent and cool most of the time.)

Is this asking too much? Any ideas? Also, non-ugly would be nice.

Thanks,

140.247.237.244 (talk) 14:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dell do a 'Studio 15' laptop that's got a 320gb hard-drive, 4gb of RAm, is quite pretty looking, comes with vista though. No idea about quality of speakers but doubt many laptops will have great ones (not a lot of space for producing either a sizeable or bass-y noise I think). Anyway that's about £600 so I guess around $900 - you can get one with 500gb hd-drive and blu-ray for about $1250. ny156uk (talk) 15:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! What do you guys think about Dell's quality? I've heard mixed things. Lenovo's are, I think, generally considered pretty solid machines. Are Dells? 140.247.45.202 (talk) 18:31, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I thought dell is a great company and so ordered a dell latitude without seeing. but they sent me a laptop with very bad quality display. only after that, i came to know that only truelife branded displays are good. the display i am hanging with is difficult to use. so better see, use the laptop before you buy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.69.33 (talk) 18:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well I got my parent's a Dell and my partner's pc is a Dell - both seem good and work very well for what they need, no complaints from them. I have a Macbook myself, and whilst I do love it the build quality is not as good as my previous iBooks....the edging has broken away around where I rest my arms, it's sharp on the edges rather than smooth and the trackpad has got 'shiny' much quicker than my previous ones). Having said this I would still go with Apple in the future - but then that's because i've got so used to the operating system (though I used Wintel PCs constantly at work and elsewhere). ny156uk (talk) 21:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm most unimpressed by the mechanical design and quality of my own "iBook" and have the impression that Apple devotes an inordinate amount of its energy to what its computers will look like when they are brand new. If you like OS X you are no longer limited to an Apple computer. I have a Dell on order not because I have any opinion of Dell but because it's light, it's cheap; and, unlike every other laptop "maker" selling in my part of the world that I investigated, Dell does not charge me for the copy of Windows that I would anyway delete (it comes with Ubuntu instead). -- Hoary (talk) 02:45, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thinkpads have come down in price. You could have gotten a T400 direct from Lenovo with XP Pro and Vista Business (XP preinstalled, dual license), 3GB RAM, and a 250GB hard drive for less than $800 shipped at the end of April when they had their last 37% off sale. The sales happen periodically—I assume there will be another in a month or two. A high-end T400 or T500 with almost everything maxed out (2.8 GHz, 4GB, 320GB, ATI graphics, high nit display) is still under $1500 after the discount. I'm no audiophile, but the speakers on my IBM T40 seem quite good, at least compared to the (expensive) Toshiba laptop I had for a while which was unlistenably horrible. -- BenRG (talk) 17:44, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If choosing Dell, check out the Dell Outlet section. They sell previously ordered, returned, refurbished and cosmetically damaged computers at lower cost then new. I recently picked up a 13 inch Inspiron with 2GB of ram and 160 GB hard drive for just over $400. The laptop was listed as refurbished with no physical blemishes.

Emacs on Win32 and remote Unix programs

Hi all, I am running Emacs (22.1.50) on a Windows XP system. I have access to Matlab remotely on a Unix system that I can connect to via SSH (I also have access to matlab on a remote WinXP system that I can connect to via RDP, but I doubt that helps). I have administrator rights locally but not on the remote systems. Now my question: Is there a way for me to start Matlab directly from Emacs (the same way I start latex by typing C-c C-c when I edit tex files)? It would be oh so convenient to test programs directly from Emacs. I realize this would likely involve some pushing of the files to the remote system on each run (by FTP?). I can connect to SSH with a key file so I would not have to enter the password each time. This might be a bit too complicated but I thought I'd ask. On a related note, if I ran Linux locally (might and might not be an option), would this be easier? Thanks! Jørgen (talk) 14:43, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you considered using SSH to connect to the Unix box and then running Emacs on the Unix box itself (through SSH)? Then, Matlab would be local to the running Emacs session. Of course, what you are trying to do is possible. I do similar things in my daily work, but I don't use Windows. I edit in Kate (on KDE). I have a terminal window in Kate that shows the command prompt from whichever remote computer I'm interested in. When I edit files, they are transferred back and forth in the background, so everything acts as though it is local. There must be a Windows program that does the same - one of which would likely be the KDE-on-Windows project. -- kainaw ™ 15:46, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Try editing the file on the windows system as "/ssh:user@host:filename" (using Tramp mode). As long as the emacs can run ssh commands in a way it understands, you can directly edit the file through the local emacs. You might need to install OpenSSH if it's not already there. Then you can run another ssh connection to actuall run matlab with the file you're editing. Another thing you could try is running SSHFS on your windows system, and just edit the file like it were a local file. -- JSBillings 13:15, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Both suggestions are useful; when I have some more time I will look into the details (I've only vaguely heard of Tramp mode, for example, but now I know what to search for). I'll also look into KDE-on-windows. Jørgen (talk) 00:38, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, Tramp mode worked (with some modifications to my local system - my Tramp version didn't support plink but all I had to do was to create a ssh.bat in a directory with PATH access and put plink (with the parameters to use a key file) in there). Editing files remotely then works fine, still haven't managed to run shell commands from emacs but that is almost as easily done in a separate terminal window. Thanks again! Jørgen (talk) 13:32, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

mobile number verification through SMS in USA

hi, I am based in India. For our website, we collect US phone numbers from people in US who want to register for our site. We want to verify the phone numbers of US registering people. For that, one solution would be to send a message to each registering person. That is costly. Another solution is SMS gateway whose initial cost is high. Is there any cheap solution to send sms to people in US from outside US, maybe India? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.69.33 (talk) 18:46, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am unsure whether it would meet your needs, but check out [[1]] for sending SMS messages.--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:10, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Java Programming

In Java, is there a simple way to find the fractional and integer parts of a number? --Simeon24601 (talk) 19:31, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If by number you mean a double or a float:

fractional part: x % 1.0

integral part: (int)x

--164.67.154.134 (talk) 21:29, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think your fractional part will work (I don't think you can take a modulo of a double in Java). You can do this,

double x = 3.1415;

int    xInt = (int) x;
double xFrac = x - xInt;

I vaguely recall that the Double Object type had some utility functions, but there is no way this is "simpler" than the above. (You would need to create a new Double object, initialize it with your primitive-double value, and then call functions on the Double object). Also, I can't find such utility functions in the API documentation, so maybe I'm mistaken about their existence. Nimur (talk) 15:33, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If your solution may need to accept negative numbers, check that it gives the results you want with them. Certes (talk) 17:17, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Random colour picture

There is any website like that ( http://www.random.org/bitmaps/ ) website, but that create also pictures with colour?? 189.0.219.13 (talk) 19:47, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is there an article for licenses that are free only for personal/private use?

There are two types of such softwares:

Free and open source software, but only for personal/private use.
Freeware, but only for personal/private use.

Is there an article about this type of common (especially the latter - most or at least many vanilla freewares are like this) license? I searched but found nothing. If not, how should such a new article be named? Thanks! -79.176.25.233 (talk) 19:47, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think such licenses need their own article. Do you think they are not sufficiently explained within the context of the above articles? (If not, how about just expanding a section within those articles?) Tempshill (talk) 20:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki for a whole city

Has any city established a Wiki just for the single city? Any large city has far more details than can be accomodated here on en.Wikipedia, so I am thinking that some cities might have a Wiki running just for their own place, no other subjects than the particular city. --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I know I saw one for a neighbourhood, I think while looking at examples to set up my own wiki. Unfortunately, I can't remember anything else about it. Sorry, gENIUS 101 20:42, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, but tell me about how setting up your own Wiki worked out. Was it difficult?--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:07, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The wiki was my first website, so a lot of my problems came from finding out how ftp worked and stuff like that. Once I got the basics down, it was relatively easy. if you use MediaWiki, like WIkipedia, it does a fair amount of the work for you. Thanks, gENIUS 101 23:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have created many of my own Wiki's (http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki, http://www.miniownersoftexas.org/wiki, etc). On Linux machines, it's very simple. You just download the MediaWiki stuff and unpack it in whatever directory your webserver is going to serve it from. You do need a copy of MySQL installed - and for me that was the hardest part. You also need to be sure that Apache (or whatever HTTP server you are using) has the PHP stuff turned on. SteveBaker (talk) 15:41, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, hearing SteveBaker talk about his wikis made me want to find out how to make my own. Thanks, gENIUS 101 19:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco seem to have them. Consider starting one for your city with Wikia. It's free, and there's no configuration or hosting necessary. Just register, and if desired, point a custom domain to it. — C M B J 00:31, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent information! I am somewhat interested, but I would be curious about the effort involved, and from the examples, how the material gets a start from Wikipedia. I would certainly need help from others to do this, too much for one person --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:11, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a wiki for a community that is a little smaller than a city. --ColinFine (talk) 17:53, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is a Rochester, New York wiki. 76.117.247.55 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Meta Repo?

I'm tired of, in Linux, having to either A. Wait around for the new release of my distro for new versions of software; B. Hunt down that software myself and update it manually, regularly; or C. Hunt for unsupported repositories for my software, which sometimes don't exist. For Ubuntu specifically, but any distro generally, is there some sort of Metarepo or comprehensive collection of other repos that one can find? That way, when a new version of OOo comes out, I don't have to wait several months, or search for it down myself, but can have it update automagically?

Thanks, Deshi no Shi (talk) 20:22, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I try to do that in my repo for Ubuntu/Super OS, but I have to say it is a very limited repository at the moment... Hacktolive (talk) 20:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not all distributions have releases. In Gentoo most packages are available several days after upstream release (at least month of testing is needed to mark something as stable). Debian Sid also always has new packages. MTM (talk) 18:42, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What does this mean (in BASH)?

I always wondered what was the proper name for this (in BASH): "$@"

I know what it is, and I know how to use it, but I simply don't they the official name for that! Google is also not a solution since we all know searcinhg with non-regular characters don't usually work Thanks Hacktolive (talk) 22:03, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The man page for bash only says it's one of the "Special Parameters" which "Expands to the positional parameters, starting from one." --h2g2bob (talk) 22:53, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I pronounce it "ess at" when I have to pronounce it. Nimur (talk) 15:40, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Who do you think has the authority to give it a 'proper name'. It is what people call it, and I would say 'dollar at'. --ColinFine (talk) 17:55, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just thought there was a "proper name"... Hacktolive (talk) 00:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is there anything in the bash source code to name it? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:52, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

C printf bug?

If printf( "%dG", iNum ) produces a floating point number rather than an integer followed by G is this a bug in the compiler being used, or is this a valid variant of printf formats? (It was 'fixed' to the intended output using printf( "%d%c", iNum, 'G'). -- SGBailey (talk) 22:44, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If your printf does that, then it's definitely not correct. It wouldn't be your compiler's problem (unless your compiler messes up strings somehow); it would be your C standard library implementation's problem. --164.67.100.135 (talk) 00:44, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's a bug - but not in the compiler - it's an error in your standard library. (And a surprising one too!) This program:

  #include <stdio.h>

  main ()
  {
    int iNum = 6 ;
    printf( "%dG", iNum ) ;
  }

Prints "6G" (as you'd expect) on my Linux machine using the standard GNU libraries. SteveBaker (talk) 03:50, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll probably report it to our embedded compiler supplier. -- SGBailey (talk) 12:15, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That would be a very public-spirited thing to do! For what it's worth, "%0G" or "%-G" would legitimately produce a floating point number - so you can kinda envisage where their code might be going wrong. SteveBaker (talk) 17:56, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Trouble redirecting an Open Office Base file to a new SQL source

This is a question I first posted on an Open Office forum: http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewforum.php?f=13

However, that forum doesn't generate much traffic. I'm hoping for more exposure/help here.

We are using Base to access a MySQL database using the JDBC driver. The database itself is simply the raw SQL code (all the create and insert statements and such) running on a server. I also recognize that all the forms, reports, and queries are part of the ODF file that base created. We can change the SQL directly on the server if we choose to, and those changes are confirmed by Base as soon as the appropriate window is refreshed. So far so good. Here is our problem. Until now, we have been connecting to a local server (localhost). We now have an online server set up and wish to redirect Base to use the SQL on that server instead of the SQL on localhost. We could easily create a new ODB file, pointing it to the new online server, but we would lose access to all the forms and queries we've designed. Is there a way to accomplish this redirect without any such loss?

I am using Open Office ver. 3.0.1, MySQL ver 5.1, Window Vista SP1, and a remote Apache server running on a Linux machine. I will provide more details on request.

Thank you (anyone) for any help you choose to provide. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.32.4.225 (talk) 23:16, 8 May 2009 (UTC) |}[reply]

May 9

Security: VPN versus standard database server

I'm looking at turning my home desktop computer into a private database server. My father's (Windows 2000) and my (Kubuntu 8.04) computers both have software firewalls and are also connected to the Internet (cable) through a router with a built-in firewall. Currently, neither computer can accept incoming connections, even from the other. My father wants the server to use a VPN, since the router has a special mode for VPNs; what security concerns might this eliminate, and what concerns might it create, versus simply opening the port and configuring PostgreSQL to accept logins?

If it makes any difference, I'm going to look into installing an open-source browser interface for the database if one is available, so that it can be accessed from computers without PostgreSQL client software. Neon Merlin 07:01, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

VPN may be useful for encrypting the connection, as the SQL protocol doesn't have any encryption. (There are some implementations using SSL, but they aren't common.) --grawity 18:20, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can't Resize Partition

Hola! I'm trying to use "GParted Live" to resize a partition on my (Windows XP) system, but I can't because there's a warning that says "Unable to read the contents of this filesystem! Because of this some operations may be unavailable." Umm...what do I do? Digger3000 (talk) 07:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can't give you any advice about GParted, but you asked what to do... The message sounds like something is inconsistent in the file system, so the very first thing I would do (which you may have done already), is to is to back up immediately to a usb disk. I would do both a backup at the file-level, and back up the partition(s). I use both Partimage (free as in speech) and The Seagate Disk Wizard (free as in beer) for partition-based backups. The latter works if there's a Seagate disk in your system. It's based on Acronis True Image, which of course is an alternative, along with those listed at List of disk cloning software. --NorwegianBlue^talk 08:24, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It might help other editors who want to help, if you told us how you have partitioned your disk. Did you buy a PC that came with two partitions, or have you set them up yourself, and if so what software have you used, how many partitions, which file systems? Mixing windows-based and linux-based partition managers is not a good idea, as they tend to have different opinions about where the exact boundaries between partitions go (something I've learned the hard way). --NorwegianBlue^talk 08:49, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I bought my PC and it came with two partitions. I want to dual-boot Windows XP and Windows 7 RC. The guide I googled on how to do that specifically mentioned GParted Live. Digger3000 (talk) 09:20, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Try running chkdsk /r inside the command prompt in Windows XP. Disk errors will trip up partition editors.--67.174.107.10 (talk) 09:31, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know anything about GParted, but see List of disk partitioning software for a list of other software you might try if you're unable to get anywhere with GParted. Note that you probably have to boot from a different drive to repartition - you didn't mention whether you're doing that currently. Tempshill (talk) 16:48, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The last time I tried, gparted didn't support ntfs out of the box. ntfsprogs is the relevant package to install (under ubuntu/debian), but then it would be weird if they didn't have that on a live cd. Have you tried mounting the partition and checked it's not mounted when you are trying to resize? --194.197.235.70 (talk) 14:14, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Detect that I am running on terminal-only PC (BASH)?

Resolved

Is there a way to detect if a program is running on a terminal with no GUI? (example: computers with no GUI, tty1-6, etc...) I am not talking about "graphical terminals" like gnome-terminal or konsole __ Thanks __ Hacktolive (talk) 11:13, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the output of the 'tty' program. If the tty is tty1, you know you're on the first console tty. Xterms look like /dev/pts/1, and serial consoles look like /dev/ttyS0, for example. Also, if there is no X session available, then the $DISPLAY variable will not be set. -- JSBillings 13:05, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But that would fail on BSD. --grawity 18:17, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd go with checking $DISPLAY, as suggested above. --Sean 14:19, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

both the tty and $DISPLAY seem to work. thanks people. Hacktolive (talk) 00:57, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Easier way to resize an image view?

Whenever I view an image my browser makes it fit within my browser window. Sometimes when I place my cursor over the image it automatically turns into a zoom tool (a magnifying lens with a plus sign in it when over the unmaximized image and a minus sign when its over the maximized image). When that happens I can get the image to enlarge with a single click. However, Sometimes, it doesn't do that but instead the image is just fixed at a certain size. If I want to enlarge, the only way I know is by going to view → zoom → zoom in, and I have to do that multiple times to get to the largest image size available. This is using Firefox, which is the only browser I use. When I do that it causes a secondary problem. For whatever reason, once I've done that laborious zoom process, subsequent web pages I open are sometimes all zoomed up and I have to reverse the process to make them normal. Can someone explain a better way; and easier method for zooming in; anything else relevant to cure my ignorance on these issues? Actually I just checked and I should clarify one error in my writing. Actually when I go to a large image and get the magnifying glass and maximize, I can also zoom even closer from there, so is it maybe that images have a default size range and anything after that has to be done manually or something?--70.19.69.27 (talk) 13:17, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The magnifying glass goes back and forth between fit-to-window and pixel-for-pixel. If you don't get a magnifying glass it's because the pixel-for-pixel image is small enough to fit in the window already. You can use Ctrl = to zoom in, Ctrl - to zoom out, and Ctrl 0 to return to the original zoom level (either fit-to-window or pixel-for-pixel, depending on how many times you've clicked the magnifying glass). The zooming controls affect all of your tabs/windows, but the magnifying glass only affects the current image. Yes, it's confusing. -- BenRG (talk) 13:47, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! Cntrl+ solves my problem. Thank you. I can click that five times in about a second and undo it with cntrl- in the same time. Doing it by going through menu functions was such a pain.—70.19.69.27 (talk) 14:08, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In general, whenever something is too tedious to do using the mouse and the menu - look at the actual words in the menu - very often, they list the keyboard shortcut right there. In this specific case, when I drop down the Firefox View/Zoom menu - I see:

  Zoom In   Ctrl++
  Zoom Out  Ctrl+-
  -----------------
  Reset     Ctrl+0
  -----------------
  Zoom Text Only

which contains the very answers BenRG gave you here! SteveBaker (talk) 17:48, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Converting FLV to MP4

So, I have a Sony-Ericsson W760, and I want to put some videos in it - but those videos are in FLV (Flash Video) format. How do I convert them to something that's understandable by my phone? (That would be 320x240 MPEG4 video, and AAC LC audio.)

I have tried using mencoder to do that ( -oac faac -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 ), but the phone doesn't like that.

I have tried using QuickTime's Export command, but QT doesn't support .flv :/

Any ideas? (Preferably either mencoder, or something free and without {spy,ad}ware.) --grawity 18:26, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, addition. I'm on Windows XP. --grawity 10:41, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What kind of computer are you using? If a Mac, try iSquint. You can also get Perian, which allows QuickTime to understand FLV. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:21, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I use MediaCoder for all this conversion stuff. It supports every format I've ever needed, and runs quite well under Wine. Indeterminate (talk) 22:31, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ffmpeg —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 23:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How does google work?

I often amuse myself by typing stupid things into google to see what the results are. Today I was messing around adding "iggity" sounds before words; when I typed 'jiggity Joe Louis' the first result was the wikipedia page for Joe Louis, which does not contain the "word" jiggity. What's going on? 86.8.176.85 (talk) 22:28, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Weird. The general idea behind this kind of thing is googlebombing, where the words people use to link to a page get associated with that page in google (accidentally or intentionally). I have no idea why Joe Louis would be associated with 'jiggity', though. Indeterminate (talk) 22:35, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See PageRank. In short, Google and other search engines hive the highest ranking to pages that contain all of the search words (or variants of those words), but will also find pages that contain some, but not all of the search terms. -- Tcncv (talk) 22:37, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)Actually the above was not such a good reference. However, on the Google Search Basics page, the Exceptions to 'Every word matters' section contains the statement, "A particular word might not appear on a page in your results if there is sufficient other evidence that the page is relevant." -- Tcncv (talk) 23:05, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Google doesn't guarantee to find pages with ALL of the words you ask for (even if you use the "advanced search" option that tells it to do that). So it couldn't find ANY pages with "jiggity" and "Joe" and "Louis" - so it looked for pages with "jiggity" and "Joe" (and it actually found one - a YouTube page here... or "Joe" and "Louis" (it found plenty of articles - and the Wikipedia one had the highest page-rank) ... or "jiggity" and "Louis" (which there are plenty of - but none with the page-rank score to beat a Wikipedia entry. SteveBaker (talk) 23:02, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"These search terms are highlighted: joe louis These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: jiggity" chocolateboy (talk) 05:08, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 10

Monitor settings and eye strain

I recently read somewhere an article discussing how certain settings on an LCD display monitor can cause eye strain. the article mentioned settings you can change that will reduce eye strain. I'm trying to find that article--or learn some other way what those settings are Rafael Mark (talk) 00:52, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I found the answer (ot "an answer") elsewhere. The refresh rate of 60 hz bothers some eyes, including mine. I increased the refresh rate to 75 hz on my new monitor and the result was immediate. No discomfort to my eyes. I got this from a comment on another site, which is not authoritative enough to reference, so this should be considered merely anecdotal at this point. Rafael Mark (talk) 02:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That is complete bogus, or in your case placebo effect. LCD displays, unlike CRT displays, are persistent. With CRTs the recommended refresh rate is 75Hz or above to scan the image more often on the screen so it flickers less, and causing less eye strain. LCDs have no such need and even if you can set the refresh rate to 1Hz the content of the screen will stay there, albeit only updating once every second. To reduce eye-strain try turning on ClearType (if you're on Windows, other OSes should have text AA enabled by default), and run your LCD screen at native resolution and set your dpi to something comfortable. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:29, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Scribd obfuscation

A search in Google took me to a page of Scribd, a site of which I'd never previously heard. When I clicked on the link I was told that I needed Javascript, so I switched to a browser in which Javascript was turned on. I was then told that I needed Flash, which I purposely avoid. This all seemed bizarre in that Google had presumably digested the strings I'd searched for without any help from either JS or Flash. I therefore clicked on Google's cached version and could read the text (in an old version of Opera, though only part of it in a new version of K-Meleon). (Judging from the frequent mid-sentence occurrences of the string S N L Varieties of Meaning plus what looks like a page number, I suppose it's a scan, legal or otherwise, of something titled Varieties of Meaning.)

As well as serving up nightmarishly humongous CSS stylesheets, it's clear that this site is doing a considerable amount of browser-sniffing and assorted dicking around. When I save the page, I can't find the text anywhere. This has tickled my idle curiosity. If anyone else here is interested too, I wonder what's going on here. -- Hoary (talk) 04:36, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Changing your User-Agent to something like "Googlebot/2.1" or "Wget/1.11.4" will make it return plain text. There's also a Javascript-based menu at the top from which you can download PDF or plain text, though it seems to require logging in. This book may be a bootleg but it's definitely all-digital (perfect spelling, perfect alignment, no noise). However the plain-text extractor doesn't understand high-level document structure and just dumps everything on each page in rough top-to-bottom order. The S N L letters are in the margin of the odd-numbered pages for some reason. -- BenRG (talk) 14:02, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, good idea! In the meantime, I thought I'd try feeding the URL to the WDG's HTML validator, with "display input" turned on. Very, very bizarre results. No surprise that the web misdesigners optimistically had the DOCTYPE declaration cite XHTML 1.0 Strict, against which it abjectly fails to validate. (The maximum number of errors was reached. Further errors in the document have not been reported.) This degree of incompetence is normal for "professional" websites. But what gibberish it contains! Notably, row after row of a table, telling us e.g. error and mistake definition / barbara logic / scientific superstitious reasoning objectivity integrity concise intro logic / definition of language. Tomorrow I'll try Wget. Thanks again! -- Hoary (talk) 15:47, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Scribd allows anyone to upload any one of numerous file formats for "on-line publishing" and has had complaints against it for pirating (including Harry Potter) because they don't check the ownership of the uploaded material. Some people might be uploading formats they don't quite handle, too, accounting for some of the gibberish. Alexa reports the average user spends 2.7 minutes there, so I don't see where they make their money. It's not on several suspicious-sites places that I checked.

@Hoary -- the images on it are all in Flash, so the text won't show up in Page Source.KoolerStill (talk) 19:37, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"they don't check the ownership of the uploaded material" - yes they do; I've had a document incorrectly flagged as a copyright violation when it wasn't, so there's definitely a system running. Its effectiveness is another matter, but it's no more a haven for piracy than YouTube is. I like the service in general though. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 20:02, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I hav mini project in 8086 programming....i want to know that how to convert this C program to assembly language for 8086 ???

#include<stdio.h> 
#include<conio.h> 
#include<iostream.h> 
void main() 
{
  clrscr();
  int i,j,n,m=0,k,g;

  cout<<"enter n";
  cin>>n;
  int l=n;

  if(n%2==0)
  {
    for(i=0;i<n/2;i++)
    {
      for(j=0;j<i;j++)
        cout<<" ";

      for(k=l;k>0;k--)
        cout<<"*";

      l=l-2;
      cout<<"\n";
    }
  }
  else
  {
    for(i=0;i<((n/2)+1);i++)
    {
      for(j=n/2;j>i;j--)
        cout<<" ";

      for(g=0;g<=m;g++)
        cout<<"*";

      m=m+2;
      cout<<"\n";
    }
  }

  getch();
}

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.74.103.74 (talk) 05:22, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One approach would be to use the GNU Compiler Collection along with the -s option to compile the program to assembly language. Note however that the generated assembly language would likely contain library routine calls to accomplish the I/O operations and possibly to manage the environment. The generated code will also likely be much different than hand crafted code. Also, gcc appears capable of generating code for the 386 family and above, but I did not see an option for 8086 mode, which is significantly different. Perhaps an older version will have 8086 support. -- Tcncv (talk) 05:54, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Indented and spaced out the code to make it more readable. Astronaut (talk) 06:10, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I recognize this as old Borland/Turbo C++ code. You could download Turbo C++ from here, and compile your program from the command line using the -S switch. The result is 311 lines of code, which of course make calls to the standard library. The result is a lot more readable than the ~1100 lines of code you get doing the same thing with another ancient compiler (Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0), but I really don't see the point of the assignment. I have in the past occasionally compiled single functions to assembly and tried to optimize the output by hand, but with a modern compiler, the compiler will probably do a better job at this task than you are able to. --NorwegianBlue^talk 13:04, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/AoA/DOS/AoADosIndex.html. It has reference for some BIOS calls if you feel like using them and not external libraries. --194.197.235.70 (talk) 14:06, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If the project is intended to teach you to write 8086 machine code - then using the compiler to do the job isn't going to help at all! Machine code written by the compiler looks utterly different than stuff you build by hand. SteveBaker (talk) 01:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Google Gallery Script

I'm trying to use this script but it doesn't seem to work for me. script source

Background info:
"Google Gallery Scipt"
Description of the script (Archived link)
Instalation link --Drogonov (talk) 10:59, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Blocking Gmail Contacts

Is it possible to block some of my Gmail contacts from sending me emails. As in, suppose they try to send me something, the mail will automatically bounce back, and they'll receive a message saying that their mail wasn't delivered. Is there an option that can turn this feature on? 117.194.227.220 (talk) 08:55, 10 May 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.194.229.208 (talk) [reply]

No. You could set a filter that automatically deletes certain messages though. --grawity 13:21, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Small Resolution Images

I was wondering how to scale a large resolution image, 3264 x 2448 pixels, down to 900 x 675 pixels while still maintaining a high quality image. This picture shows that is can be done: [2] (click full-view). The picture I'm trying to scale is moderately high quality, little or no noise and has a lot of detail, but the detail and quality goes down a lot when I try to scale it using the cubic interpolation on GIMP. I assume that picture I used as an example was over 20 megapixel before scaling, so shouldn't it be easier to maintain quality on my smaller full resolution picture when scaling? BeefJeaunt (talk) 14:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cubic certainly looks OK to me, but have you tried the sinc interpolation option? — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 14:43, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find that option, all I have are none, linear, and cubic. BeefJeaunt (talk) 15:15, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What version of GIMP do you have? I'm on 2.6.6 for Windows - I don't know what version sinc was added in — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 17:40, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The secret is to sharpen after you downsample. Don't worry about cubic versus sinc versus Lanczos. -- BenRG (talk) 18:37, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You could also try seam carving, which is available as a GIMP plugin. chocolateboy (talk) 21:09, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Amount downloaded since reboot (Windows XP)

I downloaded a bandwidth-monitoring program (NetStat Live from AnalogX.com) which unfortunately didn't seem to like my network adapter, reporting zero bandwidth usage all the time.

However, it did accurately report the amount I had downloaded (and uploaded) since I last rebooted the computer, even though most of that traffic occurred before I installed the program. This suggests to me that Windows keeps a record somewhere.

I'm currently having issues contacting the author of the program, but figured I may as well ask here too -- does anyone know an obvious way to ask Windows how much has been downloaded and uploaded since the last boot?

Cheers, all. Rawling4851 15:09, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I know it's not exactly answering your question, but another good program for monitoring network usage is NetMeter, which stores all the bandwidth statistics in its program files directory. I've found it to be very reliable. 8I.24.07.715 ^talk 15:29, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'd come accross that but not tried it 'til now; it's got quite a nice report feature. Interestingly, it only knows about the data downloaded/uploaded since I started it, not since boot. Rawling4851 15:49, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Open Task Manager and click on the Network tab.
Go to the View menu, and choose Select Columns. Turn on columns for Bytes Sent and Bytes Received. Click OK.
Go to the Options menu, and check Show Cumulative Data. --Bavi H (talk) 02:31, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome, cheers, I only got as far as step 2 on my own. So Windows does indeed keep a record. Rawling4851 13:01, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Woot, I found a couple of C++ programs (FreeMeter and pcread) using performance counters to get the data I need, and managed to understand them enough to cut out what I didn't need. :D Rawling4851 15:57, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

#using <mscorlib.dll>
using namespace System;

#using <System.dll>
using namespace System::Diagnostics;

__int64 bytesDownloaded(String^ instanceName)
{
	PerformanceCounter^ perfCounter;

	perfCounter = gcnew PerformanceCounter("Network Interface", "Bytes Received/sec", instanceName);
	return perfCounter->NextSample().RawValue;
};

int main()
{
	Console::WriteLine(String::Concat("Bytes downloaded: ", bytesDownloaded("[my network adapter's name]")));
}

google and work internet

i work at a conservative workplace and sometimes not-so-conservative emails get sent to my gmail. I like to check my personal email at work, and this is certainly allowed, and i only click on emails i know will be ok. But...I'm afraid that gmail pre-emptively opens email that I haven't even read with its fancy scripting, and that technically my company's IS algorithms could interpret this as me reading "bad" things at work. any idea if this is just paranoia or am I onto something and if so is there a gmail setting I could turn off to help this? thanks, -Bob 173.30.14.113 (talk) 15:46, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can set gmail to always use https instead of http. You'll find it at the bottom of the settings page. I think this should eliminate the possibility of anyone intercepting the communication between your browser and gmail's server. The only minor disadvantage, is that if you use the iGoogle interface, the gmail gadget will no longer work. --NorwegianBlue^talk 17:24, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

use Tor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 19:24, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

HTTPS should solve the problem. Does Google transmits data preemptively to your web browser client? Surely it does parsing and processing on all your emails at the server-side, but I was not aware it would start transmitting data to your webbrowser before you request it. Unless it is doing such preemptive caching (maybe as some part of an "accelerator" technology), those unsavory emails will not ever be detected by your local network snoopers. You should also be open about this stuff with your authoritarian IT people - they will probably understand that "random data" shows up on their network for a variety of reasons (have you ever looked at the output of a packet sniffer?! WHOAW the things you see - 95% incomprehensible, 4% relevant, and 1% ... well, you know). As long as it's not interfering with the workplace, hopefully nobody will care. Nimur (talk) 19:47, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Unless it is doing such preemptive caching" - Yeah, it prefetches messages listed in the current view (certainly in the inbox - not sure about elsewhere) to speed up loading if the user opens the message. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 20:30, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

cabling

advantages and disadvantages of twisted pair cables213.55.87.137 (talk) 16:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We have this exact section in our twisted pair article — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 17:43, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

EEE PC 901

Resolved

Does the EEE PC 901 come with out of the box support for 2gb of RAM? The Linux kernel I mean. I have searched the EEE PC wiki and it doesn't say that it definetly does. CAn anyone clarify?

Thanks 89.241.252.228 (talk) 18:28, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind sorted it myself. Keep up good work 89.241.252.228 (talk) 18:57, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OpenOffice clean startup

I have searched through the OpenOffice docs and forums, but I can't find this particular "feature" discussed anywhere. When I start OpenOffice (regardless of if I start writer, calc, etc...), it feels the need to open every OpenOffice document I've every created. It is becoming a huge nuisance. Right now, if I open any OpenOffice document, I have to wait a few minutes and then close a bunch of windows that I have no interest in seeing. This appears to be something related to sessions, but I can't find anything on OpenOffice sessions. Can anyone tell what this is called so I can forcefully disable it? -- kainaw ™ 20:09, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

this describes how to do it, so maybe check and see if one of this has occurred and can be removed? 76.117.247.55 (talk) 00:35, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

disc synchronisation

What Mac OSX synchronisation software can synchronise entire drives, as opposed to merely folders? What I want to do is to keep the normal drive inside my mac in sync with an external hard drive - that makes a spare bootable drive. The difference between drives and folders is that synchronising drives is a simple matter of only one sync. To do the same for folders means making a separate synchronisation for each drive in the root folder, and a new sync, for each new folder/file added. 78.33.187.178 (talk) 23:50, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of disk cloning software has a few Mac OS X programs that will do what I think you're wanting to do. I don't know of any software that will actually "synchronize" two drives in the sense of preserving the most recent changes made on both drives. Tempshill (talk) 02:31, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disk cloning software would work, but I would say disc cloning is rather different to synchronisation. When I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an incremental backup, it took about an hour. It felt rather less "fault tolerant" than File synchronization - quite a list of software.78.33.187.178 (talk) 10:02, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the disk cloning software on that list - well, Norton Ghost is the only one I am familiar with - will make incremental backups of entire disks. Can you explain what it means to "feel" less fault-tolerant? Tempshill (talk) 22:36, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So can Carbon Copy Cloner. Maybe I'm being a bit paranoid about it, but when it does do an incremental (one hour isn't bad, actually) you sort of get the impression if you need to go, and you stop it half way through, you'll blow the backup. And on that note, maybe I ought to try it to see, I do happen to have the disc space for it.78.33.187.178 (talk) 23:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 11

Bash Scripting errors

Hello there, I am having a problem with the script below, The script works just fine but it returns some errors. I was wondering how i can make these errors go away. If it helps i am running Ubuntu 9.04. Thank you

Script

Output Errors

SmilyHill (talk) 16:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your script seems to be doing something to crack WiFi access. If the access point is not your own, what you are doing could make you very unpopular with your neighbours and could be illegal in some jurisdictions. Astronaut (talk) 17:28, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is very true. I will not dive in to my business practices on a public forum, but i will tell you that i do not break in to anyone's WiFi without their express written permission. SmilyHill (talk) 18:00, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can't do any testing right now, but I think the problem is that in the lines like:

if [ $1 = ]; then

there has to be something on the right side of the equals sign. A common approach is to put an "x" or other symbol on both sides:

if [ x$1 = x ]; then

See if that helps. -- Coneslayer (talk) 18:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just tried it, I get the same error.

Output Errors

SmilyHill (talk) 18:23, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So presumably you're doing pen testing or something. I'd expect you to be able to fix some simple and obvious bash errors. Hint: RTFM for test. --h2g2bob (talk) 18:27, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure what error's are "obvious". That is why i am here.

I know this script is written in a sloppy way, infact i had to rewrite it for Ubuntu 9.04. If someone know a better way to write this.. or even a way to throw this in a GUI, feel free to let me know. SmilyHill (talk) 18:30, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Try some whitespace between your brackets and your expressions inside the [ : = :$VAR ] statements. As for being "obvious", the error messages are telling you exactly which line of code is broken. As mentioned above, fix these lines of code. If you need further help with test statements, type

man test

in the terminal, and you will get all the correct syntax for this type of statement. Nimur (talk) 18:38, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That worked. Thank you. SmilyHill (talk) 18:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rewrite

I'd like to know how i can rewrite this script to accept expressions. What i mean by this is that i would like to type in the following code to run the program:

User@CompName:~$ startaircrack --Mac=00:00:00:00:00 --channel=6 ESSID==12345

Or

User@CompName:~$ startaircrack -m 00:00:00:00:00 -c 6 -e 12345

The reason i'd like to do this is because the order that i give the expressions would not matter;

SmilyHill (talk) 18:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As you might have already figured out, BASH doesn't have such a feature built-in. You can either write your own argument-parser (think of a simple for-loop to iterate over the input arguments, and some switch statement logic), or find a "library" utility which already does this for more complex argument-lists, with error-handling. Nimur (talk) 18:54, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure it does. Type "help getopts" or google for Template:Websearch for tutorials. --Sean 20:00, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The most cross-platform way to write an if statement for Bourne-ish shells is:

if [ "X$var" = Xwhatever ]

This will parse correctly whether var is empty, has spaces, etc. You must of course quote the thing on the right if it's got anything weird in it. Also, I can't believe some of the rude responses in this thread. --Sean 20:00, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Infinite Boot Loop

I am not a computer expert, in fact far from it, I know very little about computers. But I was reading an article the other day about some pranks to play on people using their computers where you formed what they called an "infinite boot loop" where the computer would try to start, then shut down part of the way through, then repeat the process, obviously infinitely if there is a power supply. The article said that in order to stop it all you had to do was to start up in safe mode then delete it. Well, safe mode didn't work either. What I did was create a shortcut on my desktop that said this in the location box - "shutdown -r -t 10 -c "Your Message Here"". Is there any real way to undo this action and how can I get rid of it? Thanks jondn (talk) 19:36, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The easiest way is probably to boot from a different medium. This used to be done with floppy disks, but I doubt you have any of those lying around. The most likely candidate is your windows installation CD. If you start up with that in your drive, your computer is likely to boot from the CD, rather than the hard disk. If this doesn't work, you'll need to enter you BIOS and change the boot order. Once you've booted from the windows cd, you can enter recovery mode, which gives you a command prompt, you can type "C:" to change to your hard disk. "dir" to get a list of files and folders in your current location, and "cd foldername" to change to another folder. In Windows Vista, the startup folder is in

C:\users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

So you would type "c:" hit enter, and then "cd users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu". then you can type "del nameoffile" to delete your shortcut file. risk (talk) 19:50, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A different way to do the same thing as suggested above would be to stick your hard drive in someone else's computer, delete the offending file from in there, and then return it to its place in your machine. --Sean 20:03, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So is following these instructions different than getting in cmd through safe mode and deleting the file without the disk? A friend of mine was able to get into it and supposedly deleted the file (the next time we looked for it it was gone), but the problem still persists.

Thanks for your help jondn (talk) 22:05, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand correctly, you made a shortcut in your Startup folder (not on your desktop, it wouldn't run automatically there) which runs "shutdown -r -t 10". That restarts the computer (-r) after a ten-second warning period (-t 10). One thing you could try, if you're a fast enough typist, is pressing Win+R to open the Run dialog and then typing "shutdown -a" (without the quotes, followed by Enter). You can start typing the command before the ten-second warning dialog comes up, but don't press Enter until it's visible. That will cancel the restart, and then you have unlimited time to hunt down the file before your next restart. If you're using Windows XP or earlier then another solution is to hold down the Shift during the startup process, which will prevent programs in the Startup folder from running. They removed that feature in Vista for some reason.

Am I also to understand that your friend did this to his/her own machine, then undid it by deleting the file, and it's still happening? That makes no sense at all. -- BenRG (talk) 11:44, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You could try holding down the shift key during the boot process. I think it is supposed to suppress the running of anything in the Startup folder (at least it did so on older versions of Windows but I haven't heard if this still works on Xp or Vista). Astronaut (talk) 11:57, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

rss feeds

Hello, I am looking for a way to open all linked .html pages in a given rss feed into new tabs automatically in firefox. I would like the system to update the rss feed and when a new .html page appears to open it also in a new tab, but not to open .html pages that have already been opened into new tabs. Thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saving rss feeds (talk • contribs) 20:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have an iMacros macro that will open links from a static page, on one particular site. You'd need a script that will monitor the feed, either continuously or at intervals, and be able to identify the new content. I'd love to have one like this myself. If you'd say what scripting or programming experience you have, someone is sure to offer a solution.KoolerStill (talk) 16:32, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Future trend of the FCC's regulations in the 2.4-GHz RF spectrums?

What is the future trend of this agency's regulations in the 2.4-GHz RF spectrum —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.151.177.58 (talk) 23:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 12

Music Transcriber software

Is there any software out there that will allow me to manually enter in notes for a sheet music and transcribe the entered notes into any key or any octave I want? Acceptable (talk) 02:58, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sibelius certainly does this, and no doubt other score-writing packages do so as well how do I do a wikilink to a category?. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Put a colon after the second square bracket: Category:Scorewriters— Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 12:42, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Easy when you know how - thanks. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:17, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah thanks a bunch. Acceptable (talk) 03:46, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dotcom Bubble mk II

How do Twitter, Facebook, and their ilk make money? I overheard someone saying something like "Twitter must be worth a fortune"? srsly?? They don't charge for their service and are barely providing anything of actual value to society. Is this Phase II of the dot-com bubble? Incidentally, Twitter has zero information about their revenue or business model, to the extent it's possible to have a business model based on free blogging. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.28.115.135 (talk) 07:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Adverts —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 07:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First off, both of you should try to sign your posts with four ~'s. And now for the actual answer: As far as I know, they don't. I recall reading that neither Facebook nor Twitter have ever turned a profit. Thanks, gENIUS 101 21:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So it is overvalued then? Even if they make some money from advertising, I don't see how that would even come close to paying for their costs. 98.28.115.135 (talk) 02:31, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It can't be overvalued if it's not for sale. Twitter mostly runs on private funding, from what I understand, though they're looking at deals to bring in revenue from corporations. They've been fairly mum on what that entails. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 13:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It comes from venture capital too. Also the $200 million that Microsoft paid Facebook for a small percentage could have helped you think? (heavy sarcasm here) Sandman30s (talk) 07:05, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You guys are overlooking the obvious answers: Facebook is funded entirely by the NSA (google it) and Twitter is run out of the back of some guy's van (seriously, how hard is it to ship 160 byte messages around?) On a more serious note, both of these companies demonstrate a post-dotcom agenda of "It's the visibility, stupid". If Twitter or Facebook went out tomorrow and said "hey microsoft, yahoo, google, what will you give me for my domain and all my customers?" the price would be astoundingly high considering the estimated ROI would be "never". Instead, it's the fact that those services simply appear in front of millions of eyeballs a day that makes them incredibly valuable. Just look at the sale of Myspace (except nevermind that it's been relegated to the social networking dustbin). --66.195.232.121 (talk) 17:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for continuing with this, but I still don't understand the economics of the situation. The "venture capital" and "money from Microsoft" answers above would seem to be begging the question -- why do those companies invest? They must perceive Facebook etc to be very valuable. What is the value? Is it really the eyeballs? This "mind-share" idea was a major part of the dot-com bubble, if I recall. Why would Microsoft, Google, or whoever shell out millions for one of these services and all their subscribers (not "customers", since the users don't apparently pay anything)? Is it for the right to mine the data or send "special offers" to their email accounts? In the dot-com bubble, everyone's business model seemed to be based on this kind of "potential revenue" concept. "Build mind-share now; we'll figure out how to make money with it later." Is that what's going on here? Please help me understand.

By the way, if I owned Facebook, I would start charging a yearly subscription fee, or implement a micropayment scheme. But I know very little about finance and marketing (obviously, since I'm asking all these questions). Surely there's a good reason that the people who control Facebook and other social networking sites don't do this. What is it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.28.115.135 (talk) 06:05, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes after the Microsoft purchase, Facebook was valued at over $10 billion and the owner said that he thought it was worth much more. It is worth that much simply because of the number of people that use it and the potential in advertising revenue. Any marketing company would tell you that the more people that see the product, the more effecting the marketing. The world's most powerful revenue streams are from advertising - look at the billions of dollars of television rights being sold? Imagine your product being shown on the front page of facebook - what that would be worth to you, and how much you would have to pay to advertise there!? Sandman30s (talk) 14:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But advertising business is speculative, and has all the makings for a bubble. Money is poured in to advertisements on the presupposition that there is a return on that investment. Now that the internet medium has become commonly used for advertisements, metrics and data-collection are available which may indicate that the advertisements are not as effective as originally believed. Look at click-through rates. They are disturbingly low, and I have a hard time believing that the costs are justifiable - even on a high-volume, high-traffic site like Facebook. Nimur (talk) 14:59, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I recently signed up to Twitter and was surprised at the lack of adverts so I did some rummaging through their "about" pages to find out where their money was coming from and the answer was "it isn't". They don't make any money and spend large amounts of it. I think their plan is to build up a massive customer base (so far so good!) and then find a way to make money out of it. I'm not sure how they intend to do that. Simple adverts probably won't cover much (a lot of twitter users access it through 3rd party clients, so they won't see any adverts put on twitter.com), they'll have to come up with something more inventive, probably unique to their service. I'm not convinced they'll manage it... --Tango (talk) 15:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, some websites aren't looking to make a profit, just to keep existing and provide a service. I think I'm on one right now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 16:09, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is run by charity that is funded by donations. Twitter isn't funded by donations, it is funded by investors. People only invest if they expect to get a return on that investment, ie. the company will turn a profit. --Tango (talk) 16:26, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just giving wikipedia as an example. I can think of loads of websites that seem to exist only to provide a service to its userbase with no real profit goal in mind, yet they survive and thrive

Hosting a website costs money, that money has to come from somewhere. Either it comes from donations, or it comes from investors that expect a return. I can't see people donating to keep Twitter running, it's just not that kind of site. --Tango (talk) 21:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is worth that much simply because of the number of people that use it and the potential in advertising revenue. Any marketing company would tell you that the more people that see the product, the more effecting the marketing. The world's most powerful revenue streams are from advertising - look at the billions of dollars of television rights being sold.

I guess this is the concept I'm struggling with. Business people (who presumably know more than me about this stuff) seem to regard this "potential revenue" very favorably, despite no provable way to turn it into real revenue, at least as far as I can see. The analogy with television isn't very good, because television viewers are passively focused on TV over very long periods of time, and very subtle forms of advertisement (such as product placement, or themed shows) can be effective. Moreover, TV commercials have become an institution in their own right. Many web users block ads, and the remainder probably just ignore them since they are actively mousing around to things they are interested in on the page. Is ownership of Facebook, Twitter, and the like maybe just a "branding" thing (as in, "everyone uses Facebook...Company X owns Facebook and has their logo on it...therefore Company X has huge brand awareness")? Or maybe I'm reading too much into this, and websites really are worth whatever people think they're worth? (Is there an economic term for this sort of "virtual value"?) And didn't this idea crash and burn in the late 90s? 98.28.115.135 (talk) 18:11, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK let me answer this based on the dot-com bubble link you provided. This link speaks about several factors in its third paragraph: "A combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capital created an exuberant environment in which many of these businesses dismissed standard business models, focusing on increasing market share at the expense of the bottom line."

Based on this, they state that there was widely available venture capital at the time. Stock markets were bearish and America was in an economic boom during the 90's - and there was this phenonemom called the internet that was growing exponentially. Investors poured loads of "other" money into dot-coms. This created an irrational over-exuberance, because most of the dot-coms had shaky business models without foundations (bottom lines). This created speculation. An example of a dot-com that survived was amazon, because it had a tangible business model of selling physical stock (books) as opposed to virtual stock (stock value on the stock markets). Many other dot-coms (50%) went bust (to the tune of $5 trillion) because when the stock market crashed, they lost large volumes of stock, and lots of them had already burned their venture capital. Nobody wants to invest more in a crash, with the exception of purchasing cash-strapped companies with tangible models and solid contracts. And so that was the end of the dot-com phenomenon.

The new decade ushered in a new breed of internet companies - those based on physical sales with an underlying structure that could survive another crash. As the stock markets entered another bear run from about 2004 onwards, came the social networking heavyweights. Once again, people had venture capital to invest in myspace, facebook, etc. Even with the recent financial crisis and stock market crashes, these sites have managed to survive. Whether it's because of an excess of venture capital or because of the existence of powerful advertising streams (google makes the world go round), I don't know. Whether social networking sites are here to stay or not, is speculation. The fact that Microsoft spent so much on Facebook, and wanted to buy Yahoo for gazillions of dollars, and Oracle buying Sun (and in turn Java) really says something: the big boys of the tech world want to have their presence felt online and that is a trend that these companies have paid big money to actuaries and business analysts to OK. Sandman30s (talk) 19:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Simplify bitwise expressions?

Is there a way to simply bitwise expressions? For example, in CRC32 there is an expression: (h >> 1) ^ ((h & 1) ? POLYNOMIAL : 0). Most compilers don't implement this very efficiently but with some bitwise operator tricks you can implement this in 4 x86 assembly instructions. Is there some systematic way of doing things like this? --wj32 ^t/c 11:26, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - you need to learn about Karnaugh maps (or "K-maps" for short). The problem is that in your example here, 'h' is not a boolean but an unsigned integer or something...which makes it harder. However, understanding what the expression is doing and writing that down in English will usually help you figure out another way to handle it. In this case, we're downshifting 'h' and XOR'ing it with either POLYNOMIAL or zero. Since XOR'ing with zero does nothing, we're saying "downshift h ; if the bit that fell off the bottom end is a 1 then XOR h with POLYNOMIAL" - what you can do to optimize this depends on the machine-code of whatever processor you are using. On some CPU architectures, there is a down-shift operator that puts the bit that falls off the end into the carry flag or something - in which case you can downshift and do a conditional branch around the XOR instruction...but what is optimal depends on the architecture of the CPU you are using - and also on whether you are optimizing for minimal code size or maximum performance - and whether your input variables are already in registers...lots of things! SteveBaker (talk) 12:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I assume the four instructions you're talking about are

   shr eax, 1
   sbb ebx, ebx
   and ebx, POLYNOMIAL
   xor eax, ebx

I think the major x86 optimizing compilers know the SBB/AND trick, but they're not very good at making use of implicitly set flags (the carry flag in this case). They generate carry-setting instructions followed by SBB and AND, but only as part of specific three-instruction idioms. Probably that's because the optimization phase that could make use of the carry flag runs before the code-generation phase that could notice that the carry flag is available. But this is clearly a soluble problem because they solve it for / and %. X86 has a single instruction that produces both a quotient and a remainder and every optimizing compiler I've used is smart enough to generate a single division instruction for code that uses both. I don't know how they do that, but probably it's by turning x = b / c; y = b % c; into (x,dummy1) = divmod(b,c); (dummy2,y) = divmod(b,c); and letting common subexpression elimination handle the rest. Whatever trick they use, it would surely also work for >>1 and &1. So why don't they do that? My best guess is because it would seriously slow compilation to generate those compound assignments for every instruction that sets flag registers. Every addition and subtraction would become a compound assignment to five registers, which would cause major intermediate-language code bloat. So, yes, I think standard compiler tricks could systematically produce better bit-twiddling code, but the compiler writers aren't willing to pay the price in compilation speed.

Or maybe they just don't care. Look at the output of Microsoft C 15.0:

   mov ebx, eax
   and al, 1
   movzx eax, al
   neg eax
   sbb eax, eax
   and eax, POLYNOMIAL
   shr ebx, 1
   xor eax, ebx

So it converts the value to a byte before doing the &, then converts it back to a word, then does the NEG-SBB-AND idiom even though a simple NEG-AND would have worked. GCC 3.4.4 emits a conditional jump that will be mispredicted 50% of the time (though it can't be expected to know that). At least it's smart enough to change that to a CMOV when I specify -march=pentiumpro. GCC 4.3.2 was the only compiler that produced the kind of code I expected them all to produce, namely

   mov ebx, eax
   and eax, 1
   neg eax
   and eax, POLYNOMIAL
   shr ebx, 1
   xor eax, ebx

I'm curious to see what Intel's compiler does with this code, but I don't have it installed and I'm not too keen to download a 586 MB tar.gz file just to try a trivial two-second example.

If you were wondering about searching for provably optimal code sequences, I'm afraid I have no idea. -- BenRG (talk) 14:28, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Superoptimization for optimal code for things like this. It has to be fairly important to start running that sort of optimization though. Optimizing a really critical section is one rason many compilers allow you to put a little bit of assembly inline. Dmcq (talk) 15:41, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all your responses. I had come up with these five instructions originally (similar to what GCC produces):

; eax = edi = h
and	eax, 0xfffffffe ; if h & 1 then eax = h - 1, otherwise eax = h
sub	eax, edi ; if h & 1 then eax = h - 1 - h = -1, otherwise eax = h - h = 0
and	eax, POLYNOMIAL ; if h & 1 then eax = POLYNOMIAL, otherwise eax = 0
shr	edi, 1
xor	edi, eax

--wj32 ^t/c 05:57, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely check out the wonderful book Hacker's Delight for lots of this kind of thing. --Sean 17:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tree structure

In a tree structure, the disadvantages lie in what is obscured or left out: relations that are neither hierarchical nor transitive, or overlapping. However, are there structures that specialize in every single kind of relation - overlapping, circular, etc? What are they?--Mr.K. (talk) 17:06, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A graph is a generalization of a tree that removes hierarchy and the parent-child relationship. There are many ways to implement graphs, such as using linked lists with multiple links per node. -- kainaw ™ 19:42, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Collision detection in games

What kind of things they do for that in modern games? I've had a look on BSP, BHV and BIH but they don't answer my question. --194.197.235.70 (talk) 20:42, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Collision of spheres (or circles in 2D) is a very simple calculation, based only on the center of two spheres and the radius. Therefore, games tend to simplify things to spheres. When it is acceptable, things may become cylinders. In this case, the collision is based on the center of the cylinders and radius as before, but with height included. It is a 2D view from overhead. When things collide in the 2D view, height is checked to see if one object is above the other. Because games need to make many calculations quickly, it is rare that collision detection will go further. that is why it is not uncommon to see object partially intersect other objects before the collision detection kicks in. -- kainaw ™ 20:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This "Advanced Collision Detection Techniques" article on Gamasutra from 2000 may be informative. Tempshill (talk) 02:45, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's an expensive calculation (in general) and the idea is to use the simplest possible shapes - consistent with the needs of the game mechanics. The critical thing here is that you very rarely need an exact test. Spheres, boxes, axially-aligned boxes, frustums and 'capsules' (cylinders with hemispherical end-caps) are very popular - but some things just have to be done with detailed polygon meshes - which is a pain to program correctly and hideously expensive at runtime.

In most cases, we use a simpler shape (typically a sphere) to do a rough check - if you penetrate the sphere, then we go on to do the full calculation with a more elaborate shape...but in cases where collisions are very likely (eg the wheels of a car being tested against the road in a driving sim), that might just add more time penalty. When there are a vast number of objects and even comparing sphere-to-sphere is too costly, we'll use a 'broadphase' check where the objects are dumped into a quad-tree or octtree structure first so that we only have to check things that are in the same or adjacent cells...when they are close enough, you dump potential collision candidate pairs into a queue and perform 'narrow-phase' checks on more detailed geometry.

Very often, this odeous problem gets handled by the physics software middleware - so you just let Havok or whatever handle it...and they are welcome to that because collision detection is a tedious and generally thankless programming task! You might just have your artists model the collision volumes on an object-by-object basis rather than attempting a one-size-fits-all solution. There are tricks using BSP trees that can be used where a full mesh collision is needed - but BSP's are a pain to maintain when objects are moving or changing shape - so you have to be pretty desperate to resort to using them.

However, no two games are the same - and collision detection is one of those places where "domain-specific-knowledge" can get you huge wins.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aah gone are the days of 8-bit sprites and simple XOR algorithms... oh wherefore art thou Commodore 64? Sandman30s (talk) 07:02, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They aren't entirely gone - iPhone and flash games still do that kind of stuff. SteveBaker (talk) 20:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the replies. --194.197.235.70 (talk) 19:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Problem transferring files to CD from digital camera card

Hello! When I transfer a photo (.jpg) from my digital camera to a CD to archive it and clear the camera card, a small amount of the images strangely get corrupted. I've uploaded some of the files from the CD-corrupted copy (the file originally looked okay on the camera card) to Commons as examples:

(I've cropped two of them to preserve the anonymity of the subjects.)

File:Digital Camera Problem 2.JPG

Uncropped—just a picture of a table; too big for thumb (2.17 MB), can be accessed by clicking for full resolution

Why does this happen? Can it be fixed with some kind of photo-editing software (I no longer have the original file on the camera card to just re-copy it)? What steps can I take to prevent this in the future when I move photo files from a camera card to a CD? Thank you very much.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 21:39, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This looks like a software bug in the implementation of the file system, or the JPEG compressor, on the digital camera (maybe there was a CPU brownout during file-transfer due to low battery on the camera). In some of the pictures it looks like you dropped a color channel (or something); in others, there is irrecoverable data loss. It's not likely that these photos can be recovered. Nimur (talk) 21:57, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

He said the images look fine before they are transferred to the cd, so it's not the camera corrupting the jpeg. I've seen something similar to this when downloading pictures from the internet and the download is interrupted half way through, perhaps your software isn't burning the images to the disk properly

ps I moved the images over to the right of the page as they were interfering with the text formatting

I would check each part of the process. Somewhere along the line, it looks like data is being dropped. Maybe the camera isn't recording it properly on the card. Maybe the card has some dead spots (unreadable or unwritable) on it. Maybe the USB cable is loose. Maybe your camera or PC has some fault handling Jpegs. Maybe the CD burning software is suffering from buffer underflows. Try different cameras. Try different cards in the camera. Try different PCs. Try different burning software. and so on. If everything really is fine until you burn to CD, then check the CD burning software first (try burning at a slower speed, especially if the blank CDs are extra cheap).

C programming

Does C have a built-in command/function/etc. that returns the number of elements of a list? If so, what is it? If not, how can one determine the number of elements of a list of unknown length? Lucas Brown 42 (talk) 23:06, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

C does not have a built-in list data type. You can have a static-sized array, but you must know its length ahead of time. Or, you can have a null-terminated array (or linked-list), and you must traverse it and keep count of number of items, in order to count the list items. Nimur (talk) 23:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well - under very special circumstances. If you declare your "list" as an array:

  int myArray [ 100 ] ;

...then you can say:

  x = sizeof(myArray)/sizeof(myArray[0]) ;

...and x will be set to 100. But that can only work when the compiler can 'see' the array declaration. If you do something like this:

  int  myArray [ 100 ] ;
  int *myPointer ;
  
  myPointer = myArray ;
  
  x = sizeof(myPointer)/sizeof(myPointer[0]) ;

...then x will be the size of a pointer divided by the size of an integer - not the size of myArray! But in general - no. SteveBaker (talk) 02:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Alright... what would happen if I tried to access the n+1^th item of an n-element array? --Lucas Brown 42 (talk) 16:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's called a buffer overflow, and is a common cause of bugs and program crashes. -- 128.104.112.117 (talk) 17:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

...and because arrays in most modern programming languages start at index zero - accessing the n'th item of an n-element array is also likely to crash your program! What actually happens when you read or write past the end of the array depends on the programming language. Some languages do 'array bound checking' and making this kind of error will likely trigger an error condition. Other language (of which C and C++ are good examples) don't do this check (because it takes time that some applications can't afford to waste). In that case, what happens is that some other location in memory is accessed instead. That could be the variable declared either just before or just after your array - or it might be something else entirely. This might cause your program to crash - but it might instead just start behaving really strangely - with variables changing their value for no apparent reason! While you are still learning to program well (and even afterwards!) it's often wise to do something like this:

  #define MY_ARRAY_SIZE 100
  int myArray [ MY_ARRAY_SIZE ] ;

  assert ( y >= 0 && y < MY_ARRAY_SIZE ) ;
  x = myArray [ y ] ;

the 'assert' command crashes your program in a way that's easy to diagnose if the expression within the round brackets does not evaluate to 'true'. In most systems, these 'assert' commands can easily be 'turned off' at compile time when your program works and you don't need them anymore. SteveBaker (talk) 20:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 13

TCP sockets, do they have two socket addresses...?

From our article, Internet socket:

"As seen in the discussion below, in the TCP case, each unique socket pair 4-tuple is assigned a socket number, while in the UDP case, each unique local socket address is assigned a socket number."

May someone, please, provide a reference for that statement? --Taraborn (talk) 00:29, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a reference, but I can explain it (which might help to assuage doubt or find a reference): it refers (at least) to a server's sockets, which will all share the local address and port but have different remote addresses and/or ports. --Tardis (talk) 14:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I understand what it says, and it seems reasonable to me, but I wanted to be completely sure that it is true since I've been unable to find a different source that states the same (that TCP sockets need 2 socket addresses unlike "normal" sockets (like UDP's) that only have one). --Taraborn (talk) 17:31, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'll have to wade through RFC's if you want to find a reference for that statement, but be careful, the "sockets" and "socket numbers" discussed in the article are not the same as "sockets" and "socket descriptors" as programmers know them. If you are trying to improve the article the only advice i can give you is to remember that socket objects or socket descriptors in APIs and programming texts are different animals from the sockets and socket numbers of RFC 147. If instead you're trying to understand network programming then ignore the Internet socket article.

Is it true that TCP sockets have two addresses while UDP sockets have only one? Yes and no, depends on how you look at it i guess. Both types are bound to a local ip and port. Connection oriented TCP sockets listen and accept incoming connections (on the server side) or connect to a remote ip/port (on the client side). Connectionless UDP sockets send and receive datagrams to and from remote ip/ports.

Using TCP from the client side you first request a socket object/descriptor, then bind it to a local ip/port. You have now associated two parts of the 4-tuple with the socket, but you're not yet ready to send any data, first you must connect to a remote ip/port. Now you have the full 4-tuple associated with the TCP socket and can go ahead and read and write to the socket.

Using the connectionless UDP you start out the same way: request the socket, then bind the local ip/port. The difference is that the UDP socket does not connect to a remote ip/port, after binding the socket you're ready to send and receive datagrams. But now you have to fill in the remote ip/port part of the 4-tuple each time you send a datagram, and the socket implementation will tell you the remote ip/port each time you receive a datagram. See sendto() and recvfrom() in the Berkeley sockets API.

You always need the full 4-tuple in order to transfer any data using TCP or UDP. Sockets are bound to the local ip/port which fills in two parts of the 4-tuple. TCP sockets are connected to a remote socket which fills in the other two. UDP sockets are never connected, the 4-tuple is filled in for each datagram (which can be a different ip/port each time). It's probably true that somewhere within the socket implementation a "socket number" is assigned to a UDP socket after it is bound (two parts of the 4-tuple) but only after a TCP socket is connected (all four parts of the 4-tuple). So what? Who cares? Only the programmer who writes the socket implementation, and the unlucky editor looking for a citation for the Wikipedia article.—eric 08:35, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To add to the confusion, you can indeed call connect() on a UDP/SOCK_DGRAM socket, but all it does is say "use this address when I use send() rather than sendto()". --Sean 14:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WAV Sound in Java

Hello. The Web was unhelpful to me. When I want to play a .wav audio clip in my applet, the console displays "java.io.FileNotFoundException: <File Name Here> (The system cannot find the file specified)". The .wav file is in the same folder as my source. I tried other alternatives on the Internet, which led me to a wide variety of other errors. How do I debug this? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 01:42, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Post a minimal complete program demonstrating the problem. --Sean 13:34, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed it! Now, I have a NullPointerException error.

AudioClip wht = getAudioClip (getCodeBase, "L:/Reversi/1000 Hz.wav");
if (turn)
{
     ...
     wht.play ();
}

--Mayfare (talk) 01:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Post a minimal complete program demonstrating the problem. Something tells me you'll fix it again! --Sean 14:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Phone numbers when registering domains

I resent having to publish my phone number when I register a domain. I don't want to get any phone calls, and I don't want anybody to get my phone number from running a whois. I am under the impression that I can lose my domain name registration for not keeping the phone number updated and current (as I know you can get the name challenged, and lose the domain, for having an e-mail contact address that bounces). I assume this is a relic of the late 1970s that never got changed. Is there any way around having to have a phone number in the whois record, other than paying the registrar $20 a year for the privacy service? Tempshill (talk) 02:52, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Theoretically - you should provide that data. However, I don't think anyone would ever come after you if you put garbage there. But - should you ever need to prove that you own the domain - or defend your ownership of it in the face of some heavy-hitter who claims your infringing their business name or something - then having fake data there would be bad - which is why there is a concern. Most domain registration services now offer the possibility to put their address/phone number in those fields and have them keep your data privately in case it's actually needed. I think it's called "ID Protect" or something. See this [3] for example. $8 per year...ouch! SteveBaker (talk) 03:05, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Zoom concept in computer / Computer Graphics

If I zoom the image(both vector and raster) what will be the geometric pattern of the pixels or dots?. Whats are the operation and algorithim of zoom —Preceding unsigned comment added by Indranilzee (talk • contribs) 04:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For scaling of raster (bitmap) images, see Image scaling. For vector images, take a look at Vector graphics. Both are limited by the available detail in the starting image. While raster images may become [Pixelation|pixelated] without interpolation or appear blury with interpolation, vector graphics retain their crispness. However, the accuracy and realism of the scaled image is dependent on how accurately the image represented is encoded. Well defined geometry, such as shapes and fonts will continue to look good, but images such as maps and terrain will reveal that they do not have unlimited accuracy as you zoom in on them. Also, subtleties such as texture is difficult to accurately represent in vector graphics, but can be simulated using texture maps. -- Tcncv (talk) 07:20, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Using Fractal compression you can zoom things like terrain and it can look quite reasonable, but it is generating detail that doesn't exist in the original and strange things can appear. Dmcq (talk) 17:25, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A zoom of a 2D image is quite different from 3D. In 2D, you are just making the image larger or smaller - where in 3D you are changing the relative sizes of things closer and further away by different amounts. In either case, when you make the image smaller, you have to remove information - when you make it larger, you need to add information. Generally, both of those things are difficult. When you shrink something, you have to take care not to cause aliasing - when you grow it, the absence of additional information will either make it come out pixellated or blurry.

In 3D, we convert the 3D position of an object out there in the world into 2D using the effects of perspective:

  x' = x * s / z
  y' = y * s / z

...where (x,y,z) is the position of the object in 3D and (x',y') is the corresponding position in 2D space. The constant 's' relates to the amount of zoom. Changing that number causes the display to zoom in or out. SteveBaker (talk) 20:16, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR

Write a program to multiply two 16-bit unsigned numbers stored in the memory and store the result in the memory? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abhi8 (talk • contribs) 06:42, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the top of this page for our policy regarding homework. And please do not post the same question to multiple forums. -- Tcncv (talk) 07:01, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a particular tech review site I can't find

Hi, I'm looking to build a new computer, and I remember an article on CNET/ZDNET/whateverNET, in a blog called Hardware 2.0, about CPUs, motherboards, etc... It's quite recent, but I can't find it. Thanks in advance! 144.138.21.201 (talk) 07:37, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ZDnet: Very Best Kit List Taggart.BBS (talk) 19:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!144.138.21.132 (talk) 10:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MS word - replacing commas with dots in numbers

Does anyone know a good way to replace only the commas in numbers in a word document. I had an old script for a search string that replaced only the commas in numbers with a special character and you could then go and replace that character with the dot. But last time I tried I couldn't get it to work anymore. I think they might have changed something in "search and replace" or there's a box hidden somewhere that needs to be ticked or unticked - as usual :-( Any clues would be highly appreciated. 71.236.24.129 (talk) 08:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Look for a "regular expressions" search and replace feature. You would want to search for (this will depend a little on the regular expression flavor they use) "([0-9]),([0-9])", and replace it with "\1.\2". Or something. --Sean 13:37, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with Word's method is that you can find by wildcards but not replace by them. So it is easy to find all of the commas surrounded by "Any digit" (^#), but you can't replace them without obliterating the digits in question. --140.247.252.198 (talk) 17:58, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In Word, you can do 10 global replaces ("0," -> "0#!", "1," -> "1#!", etc.); do a search for "#!" and put back any that should not be replaced (a long process if there are lots of them); finally replace all "#!" with ".".

Alternatively, move the entire text into an editor that supports regular expressions and allows you to record short macro sequences. When done the whole lot can be moved back into word, but you will have to fix up any headers, bold, itaic, etc. Astronaut (talk) 18:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Exporting isn't an option I just spent a fun-filled night extracting the text from a locked .pdf file and putting the formatting back in. Could one use MS word's crappy macro editor to cook s.th. up? I know using the recorder won't work so I guess I'll have to look into what commands they offer. (Sigh. Assembler used to be sooo easy. It took ages, but you knew what the box was doing.) For this file I guess I'll have to go with the manual wildcard search and destroy, ahem, replace.71.236.24.129 (talk) 08:07, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR

Program to multiply two 16-bit unsigned numbers stored in the memory and store the result in the memory?--Abhi8 (talk) 09:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is the fifth time you've posted this question today, I asked you on your talk page to stop. If you continue to keep posting it, rather than wait for a reply in the original post, I will report you for disruptive behavior.

Since your textbook aparently doesn't help. here are a couple of pages that might help you with your homework assignment: Microprocessor (and links from that aricle) Computer program Assembly language Instruction set Machine code Multiplication algorithm Signedness Processor register Computer memory. Please note that our articles are not written to specifically deal with your problem, so referring to your class notes or textbook is likely to be much faster. You should also try to remember what your instructor may have mentioned regarding the relationship between adding and multiplying numbers. Lots of luck. 71.236.24.129 (talk) 09:41, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Open Source Bubble?

I fear that the next tech bubble is among companies like Sun Microsystems and Novell, who have made the decision to give away their products for free. In an effort to "compete" with Linux, Sun decided to give away Solaris. They also give away their Java IDE (NetBeans), their database program (MySQL), and their office suite (OpenOffice). They "sell" an identical suite (StarOffice). But why would someone buy StarOffice when they can download OpenOffice? I have no idea. What were they thinking? Did they want to make Sun into some sort of non-profit organization like Goodwill? If so, they more-or-less deceived the people who gave them their savings -- their investors. If I had been unfortunate enough to loan Sun money (via bonds or stock) then I'd be pretty angry right now. Giving your product away sends the message that it's worth nothing. The whole business-friendly open source theory is just that -- a theory that is looking more and more fanciful as time wears on.--24.8.183.197 (talk) 10:00, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're in the wrong place. Rant elsewhere. Shadowjams (talk) 10:16, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So, you must be the owner of the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, huh? I actually think that you are in the wrong place.--24.8.183.197 (talk) 10:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're not really asking a question, though, you're just soapboxing. A suggestion you take that elsewhere is valid, as this isn't the place to promote your own views. You're already starting from a personal assumption ("Giving your product away sends the message that it's worth nothing") which does not apply to everyone.

Perhaps he's confused us with the Free Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit With Whatever the Heck They Want. APL (talk) 02:16, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That said, many companies are seeking to transition to a service based revenue model, ie. give the product away for free but charge for the support service. Think of it as the disposable razor model of business. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 13:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is a question above. "why would someone buy StarOffice when they can download OpenOffice? I have no idea." I have no idea either. Why would someone do that? Anyway, regarding the rest, all I can say that it seems like a viable business model. Services and more valuable than products and these companies are earning millions and millions selling their services. The products serve for attracting clients--Mr.K. (talk) 10:24, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Whether it seems like a viable business model is no longer relevant. It has been proven nonviable. Sun never made enough money off of these services. And they gave them away permanently by licensing their source code under the LGPL. This left them without an exit strategy. I find it telling that Sun is being bought by Oracle -- a company known for pricing their products high.--24.8.183.197 (talk) 02:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"why would someone buy StarOffice...?" It's probably for the same reason that someone would purchase an operating system. Clearly, there are dozens of free, free operating systems. To some extent, they provide "equivalent functionality" to non-free, non-free systems. However, in the assessment of most end-users, these systems are decidedly not equivalent, and there is some feature worth paying for in Windows, Mac OS X, or one of the licensed Linux or Unix systems. Why do most people continue paying for something that they could replace with a free alternative? Maybe because they see added value, where you see no added value. A free market allows for various opinions to interact with the price-point of any given product or service - but it's a statistical process. (If you decided that wheat had no value because it was useless to you, that would not change the market price of wheat - but if most of the major grain distributors agreed with your assessment, then... ) Equivalently, if you decide that OpenOffice does have a monetary value, you are more than welcome to find someone and pay them for it - but that won't change the market price. Nimur (talk) 13:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Price is determined by supply and demand. For the price of something to reach $0 on the open market, there would need to be zero people willing to buy the product. I find it very unlikely for that to be the case with StarOffice/OpenOffice. The executives at Sun decided to price their products at $0, thus ignoring the law of supply and demand. Many companies price their products higher than this law projects as part of a prestige-pricing strategy. Sun, on the other hand, decided to market to the cheapest people in the business. That makes absolutely no sense to me. They tried to make money off of people who refuse to pay for software. Wow. Maybe they never asked who their "customers" were, and if they didn't, Sun executives need to give their pay back.

Speaking of supply and demand, you can always just lower the price of your product if you want more customers. If you want to attract more users, just lower the price. Giving it away for free is the equivalent of throwing in the towel.--24.8.183.197 (talk) 02:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What you don't get is that Sun isn't a core office or netbeans company. What the point of giving away packages for free is is to create added value for customers to use their other services, even if it means sacrificing revenue streams from products that they no longer consider their specialty. Maybe no one is buying Staroffice. But it wasn't like people were all buying Staroffice before Openoffice came around - Microsoft had pretty much cornered the market. They've turned Staroffice from a pointless weight around their necks that cost them money to maintain which could barely be recouped from pathetic sales into free advertising and a source of lucrative support monies. That's good business sense. You might as well ask yourself this: why don't videogame companies charge for game demos?--129.67.117.76 (talk) 13:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You are indeed soapboxing, but one possible answer for the scattered question: Maybe you get some technical support when purchasing a StarOffice license? Tempshill (talk) 15:48, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note that you can't have a bubble unless people are speculating something up. I'm not sure that's happening here. Whether open source is or is not a good business model will depend on a lot of conditions within the companies. But it is clear that they are engaging in a realistic and well-thought out business model: use open source to build up geek cred and brand-name recognition, but provide high-cost services to companies who can't or aren't willing to afford leaving everything up to a bunch of hackers. It's not the disposable razor model, whereby everyone pays some regular, small amount over the long term. It's a model where you get a lot of little (economically insignificant) people to use your product as a gateway to the big-money corporate investments that come with having a good reputation. Will it work out in the end better than a fully-proprietary system? That's the key question. They obviously think it will, or at least won't do worse. But you can be 100% sure that it is not an ad hoc decision they made based on being charitable. Real companies don't work that way. --140.247.252.198 (talk) 18:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Sequence of instructions

Sequence of instructions to reverse a two digit hexadecimal number available in the register AX using shift and rotate instructions.--Abhi8 (talk) 10:50, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the top of the page about homework questions. Tempshill (talk) 15:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Musical Software

I am using Cakewalk's SONAR to write music using a Yamaha S03 synthesizer. Even though it is easy to use, has its limitations. I was wondering if there is any other software to do the same job, but with more audial flexability but still having a easy-to-ues interface. Any help appreciated. --DJ Bogan (talk) 01:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How to arrive at MTBF for an STB?

Hi, different vendors quote different figures for MTBF and have different methods to calculate. Is there any standard way of arriving at MTBF for STB? ThanksDearkundan (talk) 11:38, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Usually a HALT test is used. This process subjects many units to high temperature and constant use, and applies an empircal formula to convert failure rates to failure-rates under normal conditions. If there is a standard, ISO or some other more specific industry consortium would probably publish its methodology - but these sorts of technical standards reports tend to be proprietary and expensive (sort of a "certification fee"). Also, it's not guaranteed that all vendors follow the same system. Nimur (talk) 14:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Word equal to 0000H

Word placed in register AX equal to 0000H without MOV or AND instructions.----Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Be good if you specified the microprocessor but the simplest way I can think of doing this is to turn off the power. Then again that might make it all 1s or undefined so maybe I better think more. Hmm, perhaps I better shift the contents out, but then where do all the 1's disappear to? That's very worrying. I could of course subtract it from itself or exclusive or it with itself but that seems incestuous. Anyway once I've got it set to zero how do I keep it zero? You really need a write once register, I think best is to use an electron microscope and electron gun to zap the bits of the register so they can never be one again. Dmcq (talk) 12:29, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-2's complement of the word

2's complement of the word in register AX without NEG instruction.--Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quote from the terms of the reference desk:

"If your question is homework, show that you have attempted an answer first, and we will try to help you past the stuck point. If you don't show an effort, you probably won't get help. The reference desk will not do your homework for you."

I see no evidence of any effort. Do you understand the question?, what have you read in wiki about it?, have you examples of code you tried but didn't work? Even then you probably won't be given 'the answer' but pointers so you understand the problem and how to solve it. Dmcq (talk) 17:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you read 2s complement? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:38, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Number of logic 1's of the word

Number of logic 1's of the word available in the register AX using rotate and other instructions.--Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This can be either a very boring question or quite an interesting bit twiddling exercise. See Hamming weight for the more interesting side. I'd guess though they expect you to just shift the word a bit at a time, and accumulate the count going round however many times there are bits in the register. As a confirmed bit twiddler I hold my hands up in horror. With a good modern 64 bit machine and the way memory is going down in price one could simply have a 4GB array with all the answers and look it up for 32 bit registers. Actually for a number of results this would almost certainly be slower nowadays than working it out with a good algorithm because he whole 4Gb wouldn't be in the cache. For more complex calculations though sticking everything on a big SIM card might be quite a good idea. Dmcq (talk) 07:57, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of course you could shift and mask smaller segments. For example a 32 bit register could be split into four 8-bit values, which could then be looked up in a 256 byte array and the results for the four look-ups added together. You can decide what trade-off between memory and speed you want, for example 8 four bit pieces or two 16-bit pieces could be used. -- Q Chris (talk) 08:19, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Instruction sequence to exchange two register contents

Sequence of instructions to exchange two register contents using stack.--Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why use the stack when wiki has a whole article on XOR swap algorithm. Using the search box at the top left is a good idea. Using a search engine is also a very good idea. Actually one can use add and subtract instead to make it less esoteric but xor was good for graphics. Dmcq (talk) 08:56, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

By the way it's not a good idea to use xor for swapping variables when writing a high level language, not only will it make the code obscure but the compiler can do a better job of optimizing if you just use a temporary variable. Does the OP really have to program in a low level language? - it should be left to people who like that sort of thing and will put in the effort to learn the various gotchas practically any microprocessor has. Dmcq (talk) 09:53, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Instruction sequence to check whether a byte stored in register AL is present in array of 10 bytes

Instruction sequence using string instructions to check whether a byte stored in register AL is present in an array of 10 bytes stored in the memory and to store the number of occurrences of the byte in register AH.--Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MICROPROCESSOR-Code segment to find the square of a byte

A code segment to find the square of a byte available in register AL using XLAT instruction.--Abhi8 (talk) 08:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidently these questions are homework. We will not do your homework for you. Do you have a conceptual question? Nimur (talk) 13:07, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't remove other people's messages. I've restored Nimur's response. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 17:07, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. SteveBaker (talk) 20:02, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To repeat Matt Eason; Please don't remove other people's messages. I've restored my own, Niumur's and SteveBaker's responses. Dmcq (talk) 09:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

itunes space

I have been trying to add some songs to my itunes library but it keeps telling me there's not enough space so I deleted some stuff and yet the storage space available doesn't increase... Any light shed on this issue would be appreciated 79.153.197.238 (talk) 15:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Try emptying your recycle bin. GARDEN 15:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Google map problem

I am having trouble locating the address of 72 rue Charles Michel in Paris. I can find nearby addresses and Google maps seems to do a virtual tour of the area - however not any high numbers anywhere near 72 on the rue Charles Michel. I can find only the low numbers of single digit and teens and twenties. I know the address exist because of this reference which I find in various other books as well. The address exists, however Google maps apparently does not show it even though it shows streets with similar numbers in the neighborhood. Perhaps the name changed when it got near that number. Clues? -Doug Coldwell ^talk 17:09, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

According to my streetmap of Paris (Plan de Paris par Arrondissement) bought when I lived there several years ago, there is no rue Charles Michel within the 20 Arrondissements, the Bois de Boulogne, or the Bois de Vincennes. There is however a place Charles Michels in the 15th Arr. at the intersection of av. Emile Zola, r. Linois and r. des Entrepreneurs (and above the Charles Michels metro station). Astronaut (talk) 18:03, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed your reference was from over 150 years ago, and specifically mentions St. Denis - not Paris. The r. Charles Michel in St. Denis is numbered up to 50 in Google maps. Where numbers higher than 50 would be, there is a modern industrial estate. However, using Google's "Street View" (with surprisingly high resolution in France), I can see number 68 and next door is a Cafe/Restaurant/Hotel called "Le Relais" (48°55′51.9″N 2°20′32.5″E / 48.931083°N 2.342361°E). The building you are looking for is either "Le Relais" or the large derelict building on its own plot to the left of "Le Relais" (as you look from the street), or maybe it was between these building and has been demolished. Astronaut (talk) 18:25, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yikes!!! You are a little more sophisticated on these maps than I am. Can you give me a link that shows "number 68 and next door is a Cafe/Restaurant/Hotel called "Le Relais". A link using the Google's "Street View" so I could see the buildings there. I know the building is a four story building, probably the derelict one. Would like to see a picture of the derelict building. Thanks.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 19:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I cannot work out how to get a link to jump straight into Street View. However, the GeoHack mapping thingy is quite easy to use - click on the location I provided, scroll down to Google Maps, click on the map link, scroll in as far as you can. Then, to enter street view, you can drag the little yellow man (at the top of the zoom scale) to the marker on the map. You click and drag on the photo to turn the view around, or click on one of the white arrows to move up & down the street. Exit street view by zooming out again. You will easily get the hang of things.

Anyway, as a shortcut, here are two Panoramio photos of the buildings in question - photo 1 is number 68 (the tall building) and "Le Relais" half in the frame on the left; photo 2 is the large derelict building. Astronaut (talk) 19:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looking on Street View, I've just noticed "72" painted in the wall next to the gates to the derelict building (unusual, because a small blue plaque is usually how the house number is indicated). I'm pretty sure the derelict is the one you want.

~~Looking at the satellite view from above, I guess the original plot extended down to the River Seine, before the N14 (bvd de la Libération) and concrete embankments were built.~~No, there was a towpath along the riverbank. Astronaut (talk) 20:09, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I do believe you got it. Thanks. In this reference it shows the architectial design of 1853. Looks like the same building to me! It is a building by Francois Coignet, a biography article I am working on in a sandbox. It is unique in that it is the first reinforced concrete building. The architecial drawing I probably can use in Commons because of its age. Now if I can just figure out how to get a modern picture of it that can be used in Commons. Any ideas?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 20:55, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. The plaque below the "72" on the top line I think says "Francois Coignet". --Doug Coldwell ^talk 20:59, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

At first I didn't think it was the same building, but if you look carefully (Google Street View again - this time from bvd de la Libération), the front view in the reference is the side that overlooks the River Seine. It has the correct number of windows and you can still see the small gate from the garden onto the riverbank towpath (Chemin de halage), now the bvd de la Libération. As for modern pictures, you could pay it a visit and probably take all the photos you want. Alternatively, you could try contacting the photographer of both the photos I linked above (and this third) and see if they'll release it under GFDL. Astronaut (talk) 21:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

... or this photo looks familiar. Astronaut (talk) 22:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all your help on this.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 22:57, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you'll spell it François when you make it a real article. —Tamfang (talk) 05:11, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just gotta say that this is a GREAT thread. The RefDesk denizens are an amazing resource! --Scray (talk) 03:04, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Copying a LOT of files in Linux

Hi,

Just a slight problem i have. I need to move ~90gigs of files to backup hard drive, but doing

mv * /mnt/myexthd

it complains that 'the argument list is too long' (which I do understand... each file is only about 3.8MB)...

Is there a way that I can copy everything in just one go?

TIA PrinzPH (talk) 20:11, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Try moving the parent directory. For example, if you have a gajillion files inside of /home/me/music, then use mv /home/me/music /my/backup. However, that MOVES the files, not copies them. If you want to copy, use cp -R /home/me/music /my/backup/ -- kainaw ™ 20:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Thanks Kainaw! Worked perfectly! PrinzPH (talk) 21:06, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) In cases where you don't want to move the parent directory you can use xargs, which is designed for exactly this issue. For example, to move all the files ending in .mp3 to /mnt/myexthd, do:

find -name '*.mp3' -maxdepth 1 -print0 | xargs -0 mv -t /mnt/myexthd

Who said the command line wasn't user friendly! --Sean 21:11, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can just use the shell:

for t in *.mp3; do mv $t /mnt/myexthd; done

If the individual commands are very fast, this may be slower than the find method, but it's easier to type and to remember. --Tardis (talk) 16:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Selling a used Laptop

What precautions should I take when selling a used laptop? I would imagine that there is a lot of personal/private data on my laptop right? What are the steps I need to take in order to erase these data when selling my laptop? Acceptable (talk) 21:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How I would do it: First, go through it thoroughly and backup any data you want to save. Then download a linux distribution (either puppy linux or ubuntu) and run it as a live cd on the laptop. While booted into this live cd (which makes no changes to your hard drive) go through your folders once again to make sure there isn't anything you want to save. If you are really paranoid or had very sensitive data on the laptop, run the dd command to zero out the hard drive (it overwrites every bit on the computer with a zero.) Then install an operating system on the laptop (either from the live cd, or your original operating system disks if they came with the computer.) If you are a non-technical user, you'll have to use google extensively to find out how to implement each of these steps (especially the dd command.) Taggart.BBS (talk) 21:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I do it the way Taggart.BBS said. A possibly easier way for a person unfamiliar with Linux would be to boot from an external USB hard disk and use a disk shredder program on the internal drive. Tempshill (talk) 23:23, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also consider using Disk encryption on your next laptop. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.187.92.42 (talk) 00:05, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You could use disk encryption to wipe your hard drive instead of a live CD. If you use Windows then install TrueCrypt, set it to encrypt your boot drive with an impossible-to-guess passphrase, and when it's finished encrypting, sell the computer and forget the passphrase. -- BenRG (talk) 01:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why do that when you can simply wipe it? --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you use a boot CD there's an hour or two of down time while the drive is wiped, and you have to schedule it at the very end when you're otherwise finished with the machine. TrueCrypt encrypts the drive on the fly while the system is running, and of course you can keep using it afterwards. Also, you don't have to burn the boot CD, which means one less piece of plastic in your life. -- BenRG (talk) 12:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If it were my laptop that i was selling i would use the True crypt way. First i'd choose a 64 character key, Manly composed of my email address, home address.. maybe my mouse S/N, just what ever i can find. Then after i write that down i'd use that to encrypt the hard drive with 7 passes. That will most likely take all night. Once done I'd format the hard drive. :) Hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 15:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 14

Forgot My Computer Password

I forgot my computers password and was wondering if anyone knows how to log (or hack) in without one. My computer uses Windows XP. I can enter in to another user but can not, or don't no how to, change the password from another user. --DJ Bogan (talk) 00:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you can log in as the Administrator, you can reset the password in the "Users" Control panel. Astronaut (talk) 02:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Offline NT Password & Registry Editor boot disk allows you to change the password of any account on your computer. --169.232.232.219 (talk) 06:03, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cracking Windows login passwords with physical access is almost trivial with the SAM file and Ophcrack. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

zenity (Linux)

Does anyone know how can I do this in zenity (the collapsible text)? Reading the man pages did not helped... _thanks_ Hacktolive (talk) 00:59, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well I can't see an easy way to do this. You could investigate options such as --class and --gtk-module (see: man zenity). Alternatively, you could get hold of the source code and try to make your own Zenity to support the collapsible text feature you want (start by contacting the guys mentioned on this page). Astronaut (talk) 10:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

google can't find her

Any idea , why google can't find the article Annemarie Eilfeld? 92.227.16.188 (talk) 08:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think google builds its database by crawling the web, so if no other pages on the web link to that article google will not index it, because it doesn't know it exists —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, but it is linked, at least from one site:

http://www.thewiplist.com/celebrity/Annemarie+Eilfeld_1840752/

and 4 times within wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Annemarie_Eilfeld

Is it possible, that the template in the Daniel Schuhmacher article might cause the problem? Regards 92.227.16.188 (talk) 12:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article has been around for just one month. Give Google some time. It is a good thing that Google takes time to index articles on Wikipedia. It would be a waste of time to index articles as soon as they are created since most are quickly deleted. -- kainaw ™ 13:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My experience is, that google needs 5 to 12 hours to index a new article. Let's wait and see: Umar Khan, created today, 13:27 (UTC). 92.227.16.188 (talk) 13:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's a bad example, because somebody has put a speedy delete template in it (without a reason, by the way). Let's take this: Lectionary 122, created today, 13:32 UTC 92.227.16.188 (talk) 13:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I guess the problems are to many redirects as this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Bowers#Annemarie_Eilfeld
or the blue names in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_sucht_den_Superstar#Finals_elimination_chart_6 (they should be redlinks (except Eilfeld and Schuhmacher))
92.227.16.188 (talk) 17:56, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Video playback problem

For the last few days, I have been having trouble playing videos : the videos slow down, play with interruptions or pause midway. This happens for videos being streamed online as well as for files stored in the computer. The videos, though, play more or less alright in the VLC Media Player (which I recently downloaded) but even with this, sometimes, the videos display gets muddled up. The problem occurs with Realplayer, Total Video Player and Windows Media Player, with every video I try to play. Any solutions? --Leif edling (talk) 08:30, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you checked your hardware acceleration settings? 144.138.21.132 (talk) 10:30, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

With these very settings, the videos were running perfectly up until a few days ago. If there was a problem with hardware acceleration settings, would it be possible for the videos to run in one player and not in the others? --Leif edling (talk) 11:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of things can cause jittery playback. Have you installed some new program (or malware) that is running in the background and occupying a large chunk of CPU? Have you updated any codecs or other video playback tools? Are these the same videos which previously played well? Have you had a hardware change or new drivers? Windows media playback is a sort of complicated pipeline of software, ranging from the file system to a decoder to a DirectShow filter to a graphics overlay and finally out to the screen... any one element can cause havoc with the others. Nimur (talk) 14:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

These vids were running perfectly just a few days back. I have not had driver changes/codec updates done recently. If it were malware, how come the videos run more or less without a hitch in vlc? --Leif edling (talk) 15:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May i ask what Operating System you are using? as this is a known bug in Ubuntu.– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 15:48, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Using Windows XP.--Leif edling (talk) 07:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Netrw functionality outside of vim?

I'm wondering... is there a free latex editor for windows with functionality similar to the netrw plugins of vim? I.e. the ability to edit files via ssh. I know that Kile can do this, but there isn't a windows version. Thanks, --129.67.117.76 (talk) 13:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you looked at SSHFS? It may solve your problem without a plugin by mapping a "virtual" file system over an SSH connection. You will be able to access remote files as if they were on the local machine. There is a Windows port available, as well. Nimur (talk) 14:07, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if you install Xming and PuTTY, you can run the graphical editor remotely, on the Unix system, by ssh-ing in first and then starting the graphical applications. This really helps work around many Windows and *nix portability issues. Nimur (talk) 14:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what your priorities are. If you like vim and are missing this feature from it, then you can just run it on Windows. If you don't like vim and your only concern is having this feature in some editor on Windows, then you have many choices: Emacs can edit over SSH (although you'd need to get an SSH client separately), and there are many others. If, instead, you're looking for an editor that's specifically good for LaTeX and can work over SSH, then that's a matter of taste, of course: you can even search for these (although oddly the first hit there seems to not do SSH). If none of those suit you, then Nimur's suggestion of decoupling the LaTeX and SSH parts is surely the way to go, because then you can look for good LaTeX editors without having to restrict yourself to ones that directly support SSH. --Tardis (talk) 17:06, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

instead of , why?

My friend couldn't explain to me why what's in the title applies. She suggested I ask you. Obviously, I know nothing of programming, or I'd know the answer to this... 90.193.232.41 (talk) 14:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Standard HTML (and XML) requires that nested tags are strictly ordered. This eliminates ambiguity about which tags apply at any given level of the Document Object Model. Although a lot of web-browsers accept non-standard HTML like the example above, they are technically "incorrect" if they render, and are just trying to gracefully fail instead of popping up an error message. Take a look at HTML and XML#Correctness. To put it in layman's terms, these specifications exist in order to make sure that there is exactly and only one correct interpretation of the document object model. If you violate those rules, you introduce ambiguity into how you want the document presented. (In your second example - after closing the span tag, but before closing the bold tag, there is a region of uncertain text-formatting). Nimur (talk) 15:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it uncertain? What else could it be, other than bold? 90.193.232.41 (talk) 15:56, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The example as given isn't ambiguous, but consider "". Does that mean "<b₁><b₂></b₁></b₂>" or "<b₁><b₂></b₂></b₁>"? Only be imposing the above rules can you make it unambiguous. --Sean 17:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In my understanding, it's not so much the question of how to merely display the text, but how to interpret it: if someone asks for the contents of the span tag (say, from JavaScript, or some general DOM application), what should be returned? We could introduce a new data type "still-open tag" (and "already-open tag" for other cases), but that would complicate everything because HTML would then contain more than tags; furthermore, in the "already-open" case you would lose access to any attributes that were specified earlier. If we implicitly adjoin a  to the return value so as to make it a legitimate fragment of HTML, then someone that scans through the document tag-by-tag will decide that the b tag ends twice when it really doesn't. Put differently, given AAAABBBBCCCC, what is gained by not rewriting it as AAAABBBBCCCC (or as AAAABBBBCCCC) that justifies complicating the set of possible HTML constructs? --Tardis (talk) 17:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ripping a DVD?

Alright so I have this Chobits DVD, and I want to put it on my computer and possibly convert it to a MPG so it can play on my iPod, but the only things I'm able to use are Windows Media Players, iTunes, and all basic tools on my computer.(Parental controls are not allowing me to get to Google or anything other than Achieve Online website and Wikipedia.) Is there a way to do such a thing with the things I am provided with? Gothrokkprincess (talk) 16:26, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As a direct quote from Microsoft's website;

"
It is not possible to use Windows Media Player to rip movie files from a CD to your computer's hard disk. However, if you can see the movie file on the CD in Windows Explorer, then you probably can copy and paste that file to your computer's hard disk instead.
"

Now, as of about 2 minutes ago i did not know that you can not rip DvDs with WM. I did not quote this to be rude, mealy informative. It does suggest something useful. If you can see the DvD in My Computer then try Copying the files to yuor hard drive. I hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:38, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Yeah, I figured that out the hard way, by crashing my computer almost.(I can't stand vista!) And I also figured out how to copy and paste the files, I'm doing that right now actually. 6 Minutes left. ^^ Yay! It's in VOD format though... Wonder how I can convert it to MPG... Hmmh.. Gothrokkprincess (talk) 16:43, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like you might have to download something to do that. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:49, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But.... Try dragging the largest of the VOB files in to iTunes, See what happens _{Disclaimer; I am not responsible if your computer suddenly bursts in to flames :)}– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 16:52, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Whoa man my computers running slower than usual! x_x;; Uhm, see, thing is, I don't use iTunes for my iPod, I use Rock Box, so I just plug it in, and it's like a Flash Drive, or thumb drive, same thing. Copy paste into folders I make into it, and it plays. Only thing it can play video wise though is MPG's.. v_v;; Sadens my heart that all my mp4's will no longer play on it. T^T Poor poor narwhals..! Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Alright! I found a way to convert it without a converter!! I think.. Just right click, Rename, and delete the VOB part and put MPG. xD It changes it automatically..! Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:03, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure if that will work. Its kinda like slapping a label on a Spanish book saying "this book is in English". Please let me know if it works. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:06, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well it worked whenever I took m4a music files, changed it to MP3, and they played on my iPod. Even if it didn't support m4a. ^^ I don't see why this wouldn't work, but oh well. I'm copying them onto it right now, then I'll see if it can play them or not..! I'll let you know in 1O minutes when it's done. Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's some interesting information

DVD - MPeg differences

– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Huh.. I didn't know that, thanks.. o.o; Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:22, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It opened as if it were going to play, I clicked Play From Beginning, and it just froze on me, and I had to restart the whole thing.. Man.. Now how am I gunna play em? T.T Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:25, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lets try something. Open your start menu. Right click on your internet explorer, click 'Run as Administrator', If it lets you run it then you might be able to get around those Parental controls. Once done download VLC– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nope it asks for an Admin password. T^T Plus I already have VLC, it's just blocked. v_v Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, i don't know of any way to convert these files for you. That is unless you somehow unlock VLC or download a converter. VLC has the ability to convert the VOB File for you. Talk to the person who put those restictions on that computer. Ask them nicly to unlock VLC for you. Tell them the truth; That you would like to copy DvDs that your own to your iPod. Good luck. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmh.. My Dad put them on here so I could focus on school, seeing as though I'm home schooled, I highly doubt he will unblock it.. Ugh, oh well, just going to have to have friends email me some converted files then. Thanks though! You helped me quite a bit. ^^ Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:53, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Would it hurt to ask? in the mean time lets just wait, Maybe someone else sees something that i am overlooking.– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 17:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, will do. ^^ Gothrokkprincess (talk) 17:59, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you use a password cracker to gain administrator access to the computer and download the tools you need onto a usb stick. Then they'll be available to you under the restricted account (don't use the admin account all the time cause you'll be caught) and you can hide the usb stick when needs be. Also download portable tor and portable firefox so you can view other websites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 21:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or have your friends download and burn Ophcrack– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 21:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What you want is DVD ripper software. There are lots of places to download it from, but unfortunately Achieve Online and Wikipedia are not among them. Best bet is to ask your parents if they will download a variety of ripper software for you - be prepared for a discussion about the morals of ripping DVDs (best not go down this route if they are copyright lawyers or film/TV execs), but if you try to break the parental controls, the answer will always be "no" until you have earned their trust again. Alternatively, get a friend to download the software onto a USB pen drive or CD for you. Astronaut (talk) 12:03, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Saving a web-page: Firefox vs. IExplorer

Sometimes (but consistently) IExplorer is not able to save a page at all (mainly from nytimes.com, but also others). However, I don't have any problems saving these pages with my Firefox. Why?--Mr.K. (talk) 17:58, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Because Fire Fox is way more awesome and WAY more advanced than Internet Explorer is. Gothrokkprincess (talk) 18:09, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, or to put it more precisely, Firefox is standards-compliant —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 18:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have already suspected that Firefox was more advances. I just didn't know where and how.--Mr.K. (talk) 11:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Install Windows on ext3

Is it possible to install windows on a ext2 or ext3 partition? – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 18:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I believe I watched my Dad do it once a while back. Though I'm not too sure how he did it, what he was doing, and whether or not that actually was what he was doing. @_@ Gothrokkprincess (talk) 18:19, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No. Windows is built to work with FAT, FAT 32 and NTFS formats only. You would need to hack some sort of application into the windows system architecture to make this work, which would be far more trouble than it's worth. In short, windows is not compatible with ext3 unless microsoft decide they wish to include support. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 18:25, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is de-compiling and re-compiling the kernel an option?– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 18:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That is not realistically practical. So much would change that your resulting system would no longer be "Windows." Nimur (talk) 20:54, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point, it would almost be easer to just install linux, then install VirtualBox and us windows under that... oh well– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 21:35, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Install linux (or BSD) on ntfs (or fat32)

Since linux is open source there should not be any principial problems, right? There is UMSDOS, but it works only in fat16 (and has been discontinued), and there is Wubi, but it creates ext2(3) filesystem image. Is there a more native method? -Yyy (talk) 08:16, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Linux based disk utilities

Are there Linux based Disk utilities that will mimic Checkdisk and Defragment on a NTFS Drive? Or could these programs ge downloaded and installed under Wine?– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 18:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

fsck would be the equivalent to chkdsk. Most of the filesystems that are used under Linux do not support defragmentation, and generally rarely have need for it; see the defragmentation article for more details. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 19:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The idea behind this is to mount a NTFS disk and use Linux utilities to check for NTFS problems. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 19:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

NTFS-3G might have some utilities for that. Windows programs under wine MIGHT not work due the the low level requirement for this kind of programs SF007 (talk)

Font identification?

Can anyone help me with this font - it's from the opening titles of Dad's Army, but is still in use (the modern DVD commentaries etc. are produced in it). Thanks! ╟─Treasury Tag►contribs─╢ 18:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks very similar to "Bodoni MT Black"– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 19:02, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It reminded me of a bold version of Bookman. Tempshill (talk) 19:04, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More like one of the Caslon typefaces. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see the similarity to all those (and some people have AMAZING visual memories!!), but the picture's font is completely rounded, it doesn't have any corners, which all of those do... It's a hard one! I've also just found a larger example, already on-wiki (here) if that helps at all. ╟─Treasury Tag►contribs─╢ 19:46, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please give an example of what other tv shows/movies have used this font? – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 20:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I don't know of any, but as I say, there must exist an actual computer .ttf or similar version of this font, in modern times, as it's still in use on modern sources ([4] among other places). ╟─Treasury Tag►contribs─╢ 20:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

~~:According to thiswebsite it is EF Aster. I hope this helped...~~– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 20:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Correction; Cooper Black seems to be the winner. At lease according to http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 21:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, definitely Cooper Black — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 22:42, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot, guys! ╟─Treasury Tag►contribs─╢ 06:47, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Photo-editing FOSS

Hello, everyone! I was wondering if there is any decent photo-editing FOSS available. I'm looking for a little more than just the basic viewer with brightness/contrast controls and stuff. I'm looking for more editing capabilities (like something that can do touch-up effects), free software that could compete with Adobe. Thanks!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 21:58, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The GIMP is the closest free equivalent, but Photoshop is a far sight better. Tempshill (talk) 22:05, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Gimp is a good program. To quote from thissite;

"
Probably the oldest and most well-known open source graphic application - GNU Image Manipulation Program or Gimp was started in 1995 and has since then grown to the status it has today. Gimp is a valid competitor to all of the commercial bitmap drawing programs on the market. Among its features you find: powerful painting tools, layers and channels support, multiple undo/redo, editable text layers. Gimp as a plug-in architecture and a scripting engine that allow easy extension of it's functionality. More than a 100 plug-ins and scripts are already available. Also Gimp imports files from Photoshop (psd) and can also read scalable vector graphics (svg) files."

– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 22:10, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No doubt - GIMP is the answer. It's by far the most powerful and stable OpenSourced image processing program. I doubt claims that Photoshop is significantly better. I know a lot of professional artists who prefer GIMP - and the CinePaint program (which is a spin-off of GIMP) is used quite extensively in the movie business. But for the price - you certainly can't beat it! If you already know photoshop - you might want to check out GIMPshop - which is GIMP - but hacked to make it look and feel much more like Photoshop. Some people prefer the user interface of Krita - but it's nowhere near as powerful as GIMP. You may also want to check out Comparison of raster graphics editors...but you're almost certainly going to pick GIMP anyway - so you might as well not bother! SteveBaker (talk) 03:40, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What does the OP mean by "FOSS"? Astronaut (talk) 09:29, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FOSS. -- 164.214.1.51 (talk) 10:07, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Paint.NET is also quite good. It seems to have become less and less open sourced with time, but you can still get full MIT-licensed source code. -- BenRG (talk) 11:31, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

May 15

power cord temperatures

I see that power cords have temperature ratings printed on them. My question is this: is the rating the actual temperature of the metal conductor inside the cord when carrying the rated electrical current, or is it the maximum sustained allowable temperature before the materials in the power cord (such as insulation) will be degraded? The former would imply that the lower the rating, the better the cord; the latter would imply the higher the rating, the better the cord. Also, what do notations such as "FT1" mean? (I know that "FT2" means that the cable is fire-retardant, but not sure what that means in combination with "FT1.") Thank you. 72.83.73.48 (talk) 01:06, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This site [5] explains the flame test ratings in use. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 06:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ORKUT

There is this problem with Orkut that whenever I send 5 to 6 scraps to those who are not in my friends list then the posting gets disabled to the non friends for many hours but there is no such problem with those who are my friends why is this so???It really becoming a hurdle when I want to send invitations to strangers to join in my community.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.165.84.9 (talk) 03:55, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You are probably better off asking at Orkut Support. Astronaut (talk) 09:26, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Computer auto start

Is there a way to make a computer automatically turn on whenever there is a power source, so for example if the computer shut down unexpectedly or there was a power cut, as soon as there was power available it would turn back on again?

May 8

Which Distro Should I Use?

Apostrophes and quotation marks to question marks

Infrastructure design for Information Technology services

Gmail error

Laptop advice

Emacs on Win32 and remote Unix programs

mobile number verification through SMS in USA

Java Programming

Random colour picture

Is there an article for licenses that are free only for personal/private use?

Wiki for a whole city

Meta Repo?

What does this mean (in BASH)?

C printf bug?

Trouble redirecting an Open Office Base file to a new SQL source

May 9

Security: VPN versus standard database server

Can't Resize Partition

Detect that I am running on terminal-only PC (BASH)?

Easier way to resize an image view?

Converting FLV to MP4

How does google work?

May 10

Monitor settings and eye strain

Scribd obfuscation

I hav mini project in 8086 programming....i want to know that how to convert this C program to assembly language for 8086 ???

Google Gallery Script

Blocking Gmail Contacts

Small Resolution Images

Amount downloaded since reboot (Windows XP)

google and work internet

cabling

EEE PC 901

OpenOffice clean startup

disc synchronisation

May 11

Bash Scripting errors

Rewrite

Infinite Boot Loop

rss feeds

Future trend of the FCC's regulations in the 2.4-GHz RF spectrums?

May 12

Music Transcriber software

Dotcom Bubble mk II

Simplify bitwise expressions?

Tree structure

Collision detection in games

Problem transferring files to CD from digital camera card

C programming

May 13

TCP sockets, do they have two socket addresses...?

WAV Sound in Java

Phone numbers when registering domains

Zoom concept in computer / Computer Graphics

MICROPROCESSOR

Looking for a particular tech review site I can't find

MS word - replacing commas with dots in numbers

MICROPROCESSOR

Open Source Bubble?

MICROPROCESSOR-Sequence of instructions

Musical Software

How to arrive at MTBF for an STB?

MICROPROCESSOR-Word equal to 0000H

MICROPROCESSOR-2's complement of the word

MICROPROCESSOR-Number of logic 1's of the word

MICROPROCESSOR-Instruction sequence to exchange two register contents

MICROPROCESSOR-Instruction sequence to check whether a byte stored in register AL is present in array of 10 bytes

MICROPROCESSOR-Code segment to find the square of a byte

itunes space

Google map problem

Copying a LOT of files in Linux

Selling a used Laptop

May 14

Forgot My Computer Password

zenity (Linux)

google can't find her

Video playback problem

Netrw functionality outside of vim?

<span><b></b></span> instead of <span><b></span></b>, why?